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Purchased, 1918. 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/bostontown00scud_0 


BOSTON TOWN. 








BOSTON TOWN 


BY 


HORACE E. SCUDDER 


AUTHOR OF THE BODLEY BOOKS 


WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD 


‘* See, saw, sacradown! 
Which is the way to Boston Town ? 
One foot up, the other foot down, 
That is the way to Boston Town.” 





BOSTON 


HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
Che Riversive Press, Cambridge 





Copyright, 1881, 
Br HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO, 


\ All rights reserved. 


oe j 


The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company. : 


G7F4,46 
>e2Z3p 
CONTENTS. 
a 

CHAP. PAGE 
I, GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER , . . ° ae. 
II]. Toe MAN BEFORE TRITAYUS ; ‘ ° . . 25 
III]. THe Hermit or Boston . : : ° ° ° u 42 
1V. A Day with JOHN WINTHROP . : ‘ ° ° 56 
V. Tue Rep INDIAN AND THE PALE FACE . . ° Og : 
VI. Tue LittLeE REVOLUTION p - - ° ‘ : 81 
VII. Boston PirRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS , ; . 99 
VIII. THe Province House . : ; : : ‘ « @23 
IX. A Boston Boy or tHE LAstT CENTURY . : A » 145 
X. Fanreur, Hatt AND SAM ADAMS . : e , Eee 
XI. A Smavty TEA-PARrtTy . : ; ; ‘ ‘ ‘ . 203 
XII. Boston City . : - ; : ° ; aye 290 


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. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


oo 

PAGE 
CHEEVER’s LATIN SCHOOL . : ; i : : : ai 
Master LOVELL . . : : i ; ; : ; 12 
JoHN Hancock . ‘ ; ‘ : : : ‘ : SraLG 
Tue Hancock House , ‘ F ; : : ° ‘ 18 
STATUE OF WINTHROP IN SCOLLAY SQUARE. ? ; L2G 
THE STATE-HOUSE . ‘ ; : d ; é 5 : 30 
FANEUIL HALL AND Quincy MARKET p : : ; auPg6 
THE First CHURCH . ; : : , : ; : q 37 
THE Oxtp State House ; , ; ; : : “ » 28 
THE Otp Cockep Hat . : : : ; ; : . 39 
BLACKSTONE’s House . ; : é ; : : ; . 49 
STATUE OF WINTHROP AT MountT AUBURN . 4 : 69 
A STOCKADE . 7 : : : : : P : : ears 
LaTIN AND EnGuLisH HiGcH SCHOOLS - : : : 79 
BoNnNER’s Map or Boston . ; : - p 97 
Nrx’s MATE : E : } z ; : ; ; aikis 
THe Op Province House 3 2 : “ - : atiao 
BEACON STREET MALL, BOSTON COMMON 2 ; wi Lod 
THE O_p EL 4 : : A i , é : , e156 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN . : : : 3 - : A an 146 


FRANKLIN STREET JUST BEFORE THE FIRE 4 ’ . . 150 


vill LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 


FRANKLIN’S BIRTHPLACE . ‘ : 4 : ; 5 a Ae 
Boston STONE ; ’ ; : : : - ‘ ° , AT? 
SAM ADAMS : : : : : . ; ; “ « 175 
THE FaneEvuiL HALL OF THE REVOLUTION : ; : . 176 
LIBERTY TREE . ; 5 : ; : , : . » 185 
JOHN ADAMS . : ‘ : ‘ : ; . : P . 198 
VIEW AT THE HEAD OF STATE STREET . ; : ; - 205 
THE OLD SOUTH BEFORE THE FIRE . , j ; : janie 
JOSEPH WARREN ; : ! : : - ; : + Cate 
CHRIST CHURCH . q ; , ; . ” : ; . 220 
HANGING THE LANTERNS . : : : ; : ‘ . aaa 
COMMONWEALTH AVENUE . - A : . ‘ - . 231 
MusEvuM OF FINE ARTs . , . ‘ . . -- 288 
Tne BEAcon . ; ; x ° ° . : ; 2 ae? 


TRINITY CHURCH ; x . . ; . : 3 ee) 


BOSTON TOWN. 


CHAPDER [: 
GRANDFATHER'S GRANDFATHER. 


Wuen Mr. Benjamin Callender came down tc 
breakfast at his house in Mount Vernon Street, Bos. 
ton, at half after seven o’clock on the morning of 
Thursday, November 11, 1880, he found his two 
grandsons, Benjy and Jettries, at work at their Latin 
grammars, snatching a few moments, while waiting 
for the rest of the family, to freshen their recollec- 
tion of the morning lesson, which they had been 
studying over night. They were Latin school boys, 
as their father had been before them, and their 
Grandfather Callender. Nay, his father and grand- 
father had been Latin school boys before him, and 
his father’s grandfather, who died before he was born, 
was in the Latin school from 1680 to 1683; while his 
grandfather’s grandfather was a member of the very 
first class of the school when it was established in 
1635. The boys gave him a good-morning. 


10 BOSTON TOWN. 


“ How was the dinner, grandfather ?”’ asked Benjy. 

“Were you an old boy ?”’ asked Jeff. 

“T was not the oldest. There were two or three 
older. Yes, the dinner was a good one.” 

‘Did you make a speech ?” 

“Tut, tut; you shouldn't ask too many ques- 
tions, Jeff. What should your old grandfather have 
to say?” 

“‘Oh, I know you made a speech, then. I wish I 
had gone to school with you, grandpa. We’d have 
had great fun. Mother,” said Jeff, as a lady en- 
tered the room, ‘“ grandfather made a speech at the 
Latin School Dinner last night. I know he did, and 
I’m sure it’s in the paper. I’m going to see what 
he said.” But grandfather held the morning paper 
high over his head, out of the boy’s reach. 

“Come, it’s time for all my boys to sit down at 
the breakfast table,’ said Jeff’s mother. ‘ You must 
set your younger brothers a good example, papa. 
Tell us about your dinner at the Latin School Asso- 
ciation last night.” 

“Oh, there ’s nothing to tell. We dined as usual 
on the ruins of the old Latin school. Benjy, Jeff, 
Deponite libros.” 

‘What do you mean?” 

“Did you not know that Parker’s stands about 
where the school building was before the school was 
moved to Bedford Street? To be sure; that’s the 
reason it’s called School Street. I went to school 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 11 


there when I was a boy, and so did your father; for 
it was not moved till 1844. Master Bigelow and 
-Master Gould were there in my day, and Master 
Hunt before them. Benjy, Jeff, did n't you hear 
me, — Deponite libros, I say.” 

“We haven’t got as far as that,” said Benjy, who 
was still conning his grammar at the table. 



























































































































































































































































































































































Cheever Latin School in School Street. 


‘Go to the Latin school, and don’t know what that 
means! Why, what does your teacher say, when 
school’s over and you lay aside your books ?”’ 

“Why, he says, ‘Boys, put your bocks away ;’ 
and then we all clatter the desk covers.” 

“ You might as well be at an English school. We 
used Latin, when I was at the Latin school, and it 
didn’t take long to learn what Deponite libros meant. 


12 BOSTON TOWN. 


I recollect very well hearing old Mayor Otis tell how 
he was on his way to school, on the morning of April 
19, 1775, when he found a company of Percy’s sol- 
diers across the head of the street, near King’s 
Chapel. They were getting ready to go to Lexing- 
ton, and he couldn’t get by, so he turned back and 
went down Court Street, through Washington, and 
so up School Street. 
Just as he entered the 
school-room, where all 
the boys were, he 
heard Master Lovell 
dismiss them: ‘ Boys, 
war ’s begun, and 
school’s done. Depo- 
nite libros ;’ and they 
did lay their books by, 
and didn’t come back 
to school till after the 
British had left Bos- 
ton, when the siege 
was raised. There 
bah Pais were two Lovells. 
John, the father, was a loyalist, and went off with 
the British because he wanted to; his son James was 
a patriot, and went off to Halifax with them because 
he did n’t want to.” | 
“We don’t call them masters now,” said Jeff. 
“It’s a good name, for all that. But then the 





GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 1 


name doesn’t matter so much, if you have a real 
master. Now Master Bigelow was ruled by the boys, 
but it was a different thing when Master Gould came. 
I remember that first day. The committee had in- 
troduced Master Gould to the boys and left the room. 
We all began to buzz about him, when he turned 
short round and lifted a finger to tell us to keep 
silence. It wasn’t so very big a finger, but the look 
that went with it there was no mistaking. Oh, he 
was a born master, and he was a good teacher, too. 
He made a great deal of the speaking Saturday morn- 
ings. You have that now, have n’t you, boys?” 

“‘ Oh yes, sir.” 

“ Well, mind you attend to it: 


“ ¢ How sleep the brave who sink to rest 

By all their country’s wishes blest! 

When Spring, with dewy fingers cold, 

Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 

She there shall dress a sweeter sod 

Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.’ 
That ’s what I used to speak. That was the first 
piece I learned at the Latin school.” 

“Did your legs tremble, grandfather? Mine al- 
ways do, and I’m not a bit afraid either. I wonder 

7? 
what makes them % 

“ Almost all boys’ legs tremble, Benjy. It’s the 
way the legs are made. Don’t you mind it. If 
your head’s all right, you'll soon forget all about 
your legs, and they will stop trembling.” 

“My legs had all they wanted to do,” said Jett, 


14 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘‘when I marched in the procession on the seven- 
teenth of September; and I didn’t see much of any- 
thing either. I thought it would be great fun to 
march, but I forgot I could n’t march and see the 
show too; and I shan’t be here next time Boston 
celebrates her two hundred and fiftieth.” 

‘Of course you won't,” said Benjy, with some 
scorn. ‘* How do you suppose there can be two two 
hundred and fiftieths! But when we’re fifty years 
older, Jeff, we'll ride in carriages and have a banner 
with ‘Latin School Boys in 1880’ on it.” 

“Not I. I’m gomg to be at a window to see my 
grandchildren march, and see the grand chancellor 
of the universal world. You saw him — did n’t you, 
mother ?”’ 

‘Something of the sort,” she laughed. “I saw 
a man dressed to look unlike anybody else, who 
pranced about as if he owned the town.” 

“It was a great procession,” said Grandfather 
Callender; “and Boston never looked handsomer. 
I was glad Governor Winthrop saw it from Scollay 
Square, and I wish Sam Adams could have seen it 
on Washington Street.” 

‘“T remember such processions of trades when I 
was a little girl,” said the boys’ mother. “TI liked 
nothing better than to scramble for the crackers that 
they baked in carts and threw into the streets. That 
old printing-press of Franklin’s has figured in every 
procession that I can remember.” 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 15 


“ Your grandfather, Sally, used to tell me about 
Washington’s visit to Boston in 1789, when the 
school children were drawn up in a file where the 
general was to pass. They all had Jong quills in 
their hands, such as they used then for writing; and 
when Washington went by, they all rolled the quills 
between their palms. It was a queer kind of salute. 
I never understood how they happened to do it. 
Everybody laughed, though I don’t believe Wash- 
ington did. There was a triumphal arch stretched 
across Washington Street, from the old State House, 
which was decorated with flags, flowers, and ever- 
greens, and a chorus was stationed there on top of 
the arch, which began to sing loudly as soon as 
Washington came near, and until he had _ passed 
through the arch. I think that was better than a 
band of music. Next time your mother sends you to 
Pierce’s grocery store on an errand, do you stand by 
Winthrop’s statue, and look up at the face of the 
building, and tell me what you see.” 

ean. biknow, said Jett; ““T’ve seen it. It’s a 
tablet in the wall, where it ‘says, ‘Occupied by 
Washington in 1789. I never understood what it 
was. It was a fort — wasn't it?” 

“A fort? Oh no; it was only Joseph Ingersoll’s 
boarding-house, where Washington stayed.” 

“T should n’t think General Washington would 
have stayed at a boarding-house,” said Benjy. 

‘“‘It was quite the only good public house that he 


16 BOSTON TOWN. 


could stay at. The taverns were not so comforta- 


ble.” 
‘“¢ Why did n’t he stay at the governor’s? I should 


think the governor ought to have invited him.” 


LOM 
RAY 


\\ ASS 
ASS . 


IM 
iy 
SS 





“The governor was a vain man. He was the John 
Hancock who writ his name so large at the head of 
the Declaration of Independence, and he had a no- 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 7.7 


tion that as governor of Massachusetts he was a kind 
of independent sovereign, and that it was the duty 
of the President of the United States first to call 
upon him. He did not. dare say this outright, but 
he made a great dinner and invited the President to 
it, excusing himself from first calling to pay his re- 
spects on the ground that he was ill at home. Wash- 
ington declined the invitation, and intimated that a 
man who was well enough to give a dinner party 
was well enough to call on his guest. So Hancock, 
who saw his mistake, sent word that he should call 
the next day at any hazard.” 

“ Well, was he really sick, grandpa ?”’ 

“No, but he was a high liver, and he suffered 
from the gout so that he sometimes had to be car- 
ried about, and in that fashion he was taken to see 
Washington. I presume he made himself look as 
helpless as possible.” 

‘You have dined at Hancock’s house — have n’t 
you, grandfather ?”’ 

‘Yes, Benjy. I am sorry you never could have 
seen the house. You pass the place every day when 
you go to school, but there is nothing to remind you 
of the old stone mansion which stood back from the 
street near the top of the hill.” 

“ Did you ever see Hancock ?” 

“No, he died in 1793, — four years after Wash- 
ington was here. I have often heard my father 


speak of his funeral. Father was a little over thirty 
2 


18 BOSTON TOWN. 


years old then, and marched in the procession, as one 
of the militia. It was the greatest funeral ever had 
in Boston, they said. People went aioot then, as 
they ought to go, and carried the bier instead of 
shoving it into a wagon and getting into carriages 





The Hancock House 


themselves. You can see his tomb now in the old 
Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street.” 
“Somehow,” said Jeff, “it always seems as if you 
must have seen all these people, grandfather, you ’re 
so old, and know all about them.” Grandfather 
laughed. 
“Well, I’m not so very old, but I can remember 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 19 


my grandfather, who was ninety-six when he died. 
I was eight years old then, — a little younger than 
you, Benjy, —and grandfather used to tell me stories. 
He was born in 1717, and he could remember his 
grandfather who was born in 1630, the very year 
the town of Boston was founded ; for we have been a 
long-lived family. My grandfather’s grandfather was 
eighty-seven years old when grandfather was born, 
and he lived to be ninety-seven ; so you see I have 
heard my grandfather tell stories which he heard 
from his grandfather. Think of it, Jeff and Benjy, 
his grandfather was a friend of Winthrop and Endi- 
cott, and Bradford of Plymouth ; and my grandfather 
knew Judge Sewall and Cotton Mather and Frank- 
ln; and my father knew Sam Adams and Copley, 
and Knox, and had seen Washington’ — _ 

“Yes,” broke in his daughter, “and you knew 
John Adams and John Quincy Adams and Web- 
ster.” 

‘“To be sure, and so it does almost seem as if I 
ought to be as old as Boston, for I can remember, 
by my grandfather’s help, back to the founding of 
They 





“ Hurra!” said Jeff. “ Grandpa, you ought to 
have marched in the procession. You ought to be 
a procession all by yourself.” 

“* Come, come ; don’t make fun of your old grand- 
father. I’m not so very old. I didn’t go to sleep 
in the last century and wake up in this, as some 


20) BOSTON TOWN. 


of my friends who are five years older boast of do- 
ing.” 

“Any way,” said Benjy, “I don’t believe any- 
thing ever happened in Boston that grandfather has 
n’t heard of.” 

“That’s because I’ve always lived here, Benjy, 
and have had such very old grandfathers. But Bos- 
ton is a much bigger place than when I was a boy. 
Why, I remember ” — 

“ My dear father, if you don’t eat your break- 
fast the boys never will; and they will be late at 
school. You must start your grandfather in the 
evening, boys, and then you won't stop his eating.” 

‘¢ But we should stop his nap, mother. He always 
takes a nap after tea. Which would you rather do, 
grandfather, eat or sleep ?”’ 

“TI can’t do both, you rogues? Well see, we'll 
see. Wait till you’re grandfathers yourselves,” 

‘Then well say,” said Jeff, “‘I’ve often heard 
my grandfather tell stories which his grandtather’s 
grandfather told him about Boston in 1630.” 

“Tut, tut, child. That’s gomg too far back. I 
don’t remember my grandfather’s grandfather,” 

‘¢ And how would you like it,” persisted Jeff, “ if 
my little grandson should say to me, ‘ Well, grand- 
father, what was it that your grandfather told you 
at breakfast ?’ and I should have to say, ‘ My little 
grandson, my grandfather stopped telling me any- 
thing, because he wanted to eat his breakfast.’ How 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 21 


little that would sound! As if one breakfast so far 
back could n’t have waited!” | 
- Grandfather Callender coughed a little, and looked 
at his daughter. 

“Sally,” said he, “ get the boys off to school; it’s 
time they learned a little. Here, you young rascal 
of a Jeff, say this line after me before you go : — 


‘¢¢Pater, avus, proavus, abavus, atavus, tritavus.’ 


Do you know what that means ?”’ 

“ Pater means father.” 

“ And what does avus mean ?”’ 

“ Grandfather.” 

“ Very good; and proavus ?” 

“TY don’t know, unless it’s great-grandfather.” 

“ That ’s right; you’re on the track ; now go ahead 
with the rest. Abavus comes next.” 

“ Abavus means great-great-grandfather.” 

“Right, you’ve got back to 1717, when your 
ereat-great-grandfather was born. Atavus ?”’ 

“ Great-great-great-grandfather.”’ 

“ Right again. He was born in 1673. Now then 
for tritavus.” 

“ Great-great-great-great-grandfather,”’ said Jeff, 
very deliberately. 

‘Well done, and so it is, for your tritavus was 
born in 1630. Now say the line again.” 


‘¢¢ Pater, avus, proavus ’ ’? — 


“Well, goon. Ab” — 


22 BOSTON TOWN. 
“¢ ¢__ Abavus, atavus, tritavus,’ ”’ 
“ That’s right. Now, once more.” 


‘«* Pater, avus, proayus, abavus, atavus, tritavus.’ ’’ 


‘“‘ Bravo, Jeff. There are your ancestors all in a 
row, reaching from this breakfast room back to John 
Cotton’s Boston. Now say that line to yourself as 
you cross the Common on your way to school, and 
teach it to Benjy. It will be worth all you will learn 
in school to-day. And see if you can remember it 
till Saturday. If you will, I’ll pay you for it.” 

‘What will you pay me, grandfather ?” 

“Oh, you little bargainer. You want to see if it 
will be worth while—do you? I will tell you. I 
have been thinking of it as we’ve been talking. 
Your school doesn’t keep Saturday afternoon. Now 
if you and Benjy can each say that line to me with- 
out a false quantity Saturday, when you come back 
from school, I will take a walk with you in the after- 
noon, and show you a little of Boston.” 

“Why, grandfather,” said Benjy, “ we’ve always 
lived in Boston.” 

“ You have, eh? Ever since 1630? But I have 
n't. Then perhaps you’ll show me. Id like to see 
the Boston that Winthrop lived in, and that Judge 
Sewall lived in, and Cotton Mather and Sam Adams 
and Ben Franklin.” 

“Oh, I know,” said Jeff. ‘‘ You ’re going to show 
us some old houses, and tell us about Boston as it 
used to be — are n't you, grandpa ?”’ 


GRANDFATHER’S GRANDFATHER. 23 


“ We’ll see, we'll see. Can you walk as far as 
T can, d’ye think ? 
. ‘6 ¢ See saw, sacradown, 
Which is the way to Boston town ? 


One foot up, the other foot down, 
And that is the way to Boston town.’ ”’ 


Thereupon the old gentleman began to whistle and 
to walk hard round about the breakfast room, while 
his daughter laughed, and the boys clapped their 
hands. 

“7 ll remember the line, dear avus,”’ said Jeff, 
“and I'll teach Benjy. Come, Benjy, we shall be 
late to school,” and, snatching kisses and caps, away 
went the boys. 

“Dear father, you will tire yourself with those 
boys,” said his daughter, looking affectionately at 
him. 

“ Not a bit, Sally ; and do you let me go my own 
way. I’ll show them old Boston, my dear. Your 
boys must know the town. Latin’s very well, and 
tops and skates, but the boy who lives in Boston and 
does n’t know its history has never had a grandfa- 
ther, you may be sure of that, or his grandfather 
was not worth anything. Why, if my old grandfather 
hadn’t— Bless that daughter of mine, if she has n't 
left the room! Never mind, she’s heard all my old 
stories, but the boys haven't, and they shall, aye, 
they shall hear them,” and the old gentleman, who 
sometimes got excited, struck his. hand down on the 


24 BOSTON TOWN. 


mahogany table. A blue China plate was a little too 
near. | 

“JT didn’t mean to break that plate, Sally. It 
was too near the edge of the table,” and Grand- 
father Callender looked on meekly as his daughter, 
who had reéntered the room, picked up the broken 
hits. 


CHAPTER II. 
THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 


Tuer Callenders always had an early dinner on the 
boys’ account, and when Saturday came, and Grand- 
father Callender came into the dining-room, Jeff and 
Benjy were already in their seats. 

“Get up, boys,” said he; “you can’t have your 
dinner till you’ve said your Latin line. Stand in a 
row, and they stood side by side in front of his chair. 

“Say it together,” and they said it in concert. 
Then he made them say it separately. He made them 
spell it forward and spell it backward. 

“There!” he exclaimed. “You know that line 
now, you’ve got it by tongue. Let’s see if you can 
get it by heart. We'll have our dinner now, and 
then we'll go out and invite the statue in Scollay 
Square to take a walk with us.” 

‘‘T wish he would,” said Jeff.‘ What a noise his 
bronze legs would make on the pavement. What is 
it, grandfather, that he holds, in his right hand? I 
suppose the book is his family Bible.” 

“It is the Charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 
with its great seal, Jeff. Winthrop and his Bases a 

“Including Tritavus.”’ 


26 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Tritavus was born in 1630, the year Boston was 
founded. Winthrop was the man before Tritavus. I 
. sq didn’t try to count 
your ancestors back 
of the first one born 
in old Boston, but 
his father came over 
in the ship with 
Winthrop.” 

‘‘ But what is the 
Charter, grandfa- 
ther?” asked Ben- 
jy. ‘It looks like 
your college diplo- 
ma rolled up.” 

“ 1 will show it 
to you at the State 
House, some day. 
It was the parch- 
ment signed by King 
Charles I. of Eng- 
land giving certain 
people authority to 
set up a colony in 
Massachusetts Bay. 
Charles, who calls 

















Statue of Winthrop in Scollay Square. 


himself king of Eng- 
land, Scotland, France, and Ireland, was held by Eng- 
lish people to own a good part of North America. 


THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 25 


He swept his hand up and down the country and said 
‘that belongs to me;’ and so whoever went from 
England to settle on any of that land must first get 
the king’s consent. The Charter was his written 
permission by which these people could plant a col- 
ony there; and choose managers of it, provided they 
would remain good subjects of the king, not meddle 
with any of the matters that belonged to him to 
determine, and give a good account of themselves. 
Those who had this permission of the king were 
protected against any intruders, and as the king 
was very powerful, it was very necessary to have his 
Charter. Winthrop and his friends had spent a great 
deal of money in getting ready for the settlement, 
and they made sure that they would not be disturbed 
in their plans, before they ventured. So when John 
Winthrop is shown in the statue as stepping ashore, 
with the Charter in his hand, it means that the men 
who founded Boston held fast to their English ways 
and Enelish rights, and were not wild rovers who 
wanted to get into the wilderness out of everybody’s 
way. The Charter meant a good, sound government 
with the King of England behind it; and the Bible 
in the other hand meant that Winthrop and _ his 
friends intended to be governed by the law of God as 
they read it there. They thought the king’s Char- 
ter gave them land and an Englishman’s home ; but 
they looked to the Bible to tell them how to live on 
the land, and how to secure a place in the kingdom of 


28 BOSTON TOWN. 


God, without which England or New England was no 
better to them than the middle of Africa.” 

“‘ Come, father,” said the boys’ mother, “ you won’t 
eat your dinner if you keep talking.” 

‘Keep preaching, you mean, Sally. You think I 
talk too much about these things, but I tell you they 
are at the beginning of all honest history, and if lam 
going to show this old town to the boys, I must’? — 

“ Well, well, father, but please don’t begin again. 
The boys will be ready before you are.” There was 
no delay on the old gentleman’s part, for as soon as 
dinner was over, and his key had fallen, they set out. 
His key had fallen? Yes he always took a nap in his 
chair after dinner, and when he composed himself for 
sleep, held the door-key lightly between his thumb 
and forefinger. The moment he dropped asleep, his 
muscles relaxed, the thumb and forefinger parted, 
the key dropped upon a tile which he kept for the | 
purpose, and the sound waked him. It was his alarm 
clock set for the moment after he should fall asleep, 
for he had a theory that all the refreshment of an 
after-dinner nap lay in the single sensation of “losing 
himself.”” Sometimes his daughter, when she was 
sure a little longer sleep would be good for him, 
would softly push the tile a little to one side, and the 
key fallmg on the Turkey rug would fail to wake 
him. 

To-day the boys sat in the window-seat until they 
heard the key drop, when they jumped up, and their 


THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 29 


grandfather with them, ready for their excursion. 
They went to Scollay Square to start, for there stood 
the bronze statue of Governor Winthrop, and if they 
could not take him with them, they could at least 
have a good look at him before they left him behind 
on his granite pedestal. 

“ He is looking in the general direction of his first 
house,” said grandfather, “‘ and we must see if we can 
find the remains of the first settlers. Well start from 
Charlestown, where they started.” 

“Did people come to Boston by way of Charles- 
town?” 

‘“‘ How did they get to Charlestown without going 
through Boston ?” 

“That depends upon where they started from, 
Jeff. Winthrop ‘and his companions came to Charles- 
town from Salem by land, and it would have been a 
very roundabout journey which took them through 
Boston.” 

‘Then did n’t they sail from England straight into 
Boston Harbor ?”’ 

“No. They sailed to Salem, where there was al- 
ready a settlement formed by the same Massachusetts 
Company. At Salem they found Endicott and about 
two hundred others: a year before Thomas Graves, 
an engineer, had looked about for a place for a new 
town and had chosen Charlestown, and there about a 
hundred people were established. Winthrop did not 
think Salem a very pleasant place, so he and his 


30 BOSTON TOWN. 


friends marched forward to Charlestown. There was 
one great house there at that time and a number of 
wigwams; so Governor Winthrop and some of the 
chief men were quartered in the Great House, and 
the rest set up tents and booths and made log huts, I 
suppose for temporary shelter.” 

























































































































































































The State House. 


‘Then, I suppose,” said Benjy, “ that they looked 
across from Charlestown to Boston and liked the looks 
of the place, and so went over.” 

‘Something thus; but come, boys, we won't go 
to Charlestown this afternoon; we’ll go up to the 
top of the State House, and get a bird’s-eye view; 


THE MAN. BEFORE TRITAVUS. aa 


then perhaps you can see better how the place looked 
when there were no houses on it.” So they all turned 
back from Bowdoin Square, which they had reached 
while they had, been talking, and climbed the hill to 
the State House, and up the State House steps, through 
the dome, and so to the cupola, at the top. They 
chanced to be the only people there that day, and 
though it was not pertectly clear they could see the 
neighboring country fairly well. 

“There,” said grandfather, ‘if you look beyond 
the wharves at the end of Charles River Bridge and 
Warren Bridge you will see that the land rises to- 
ward Bunker’s Hill. It was round the foot of that 
hill that the first Charlestown was built, and only a 
narrow strait separated Charlestown from this penin- 
sula, and that strait of course was the Charles River. 
But the distance was really greater than it is now. 
Do you make out the gas-house over there?” and he 
pointed toward Copp’s Hill. 

ey C8, SIT. 

“Well, now look over to where the Craigie Bridge 
starts from on this side. Those two points were the 
nearest to Charlestown, but between them was a great 
bay or cove, which was partly water, partly marshy 
land. It was shaped a little like a horseshoe, and 
the head of the cove, which was called Mill Cove, was 
about where Haymarket Square is now. An irregular 
patch of solid ground, like a breakwater, stretched 
across the broadest part of the cove, and afterward 


i iP BOSTON TOWN. 


people used it for a sort of stepping-stone to save 
them the necessity of going away round. They built 
a causeway over to this island from each point and 
so got across. But there was no causeway there then. 
What Winthrop saw, when he looked across Charles 
River from Charlestown, was a headland to the left, 
called Snow Hill, or Copp’s Hill afterward; then a 
marshy cove, and to the right a series of bold _ hills 
shutting out his view of anything beyond. Our 
State House, where we are, stands on one of them, 
you know, but they have all been cut down and some 
of them altogether leveled. There were three hills 
in the centre grouped together, so much higher than 
the others that the people in Charlestown called the 
place Trimountain, a name which finally settled into 
our Tremont, and the Indians called it Shawmut.” 

‘Were there Indians living here then?” 

“No, not on this neck of land I believe. There 
was only one man living here at the time, and 
he was William Blackstone. Winthrop and his com- 
pany expected to make Charlestown their home, but 
they only stayed there through the summer. They 
had a good deal of sickness, and at last the water 
seemed to be giving out in the springs. I don’t 
know whether Winthrop had been across the river to 
explore the promontory, but one day Blackstone took 
a skiff and went over to Charlestown to see the gov- 
ernor and tell him that there were excellent springs 
in Shawmut, and to propose that all the people should 


THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. ao 


go there and settle. I should n’t be at all surprised if 
Winthrop went back with Blackstone and climbed 
this very hill to see how the land lay. If he stood 
- here, he must have been almost as high as we are 
now. He saw a lower hill farther down, occupied 
now by Beacon and Mount Vernon streets, about 
where Louisburg Square is, and on the western slope 
was Blackstone’s house. Near by was his spring, and 
if Blackstone was with him he could have pointed 
out three or four other springs, one where Pemberton 
Square is now, and especially one at the head of 
Spring Lane. When they were building the new 
post-office they struck some running water which they 
think comes from that spring, and they use it now 
in the post-office. Then Winthrop saw how on the 
other side of the peninsula was a great cove, with its 
head at Dock Square, sweeping round to a good hill, 
afterward known as Fort Hill, and he could look 
across, as we are looking now, to the harbor, and then 
by the narrow neck, which was scarcely wider than 
Washington Street is now, that connected the pen- 
insula with the main-land. This irregular piece of 
ground, almost an island, covered with green grass 
and a few trees, with springs on the hill-sides and 
little brooks running down from them, with a broad 
harbor in front and a high hill overlooking it, must 
have seemed to him the very place for his settlement. 
He saw Blackstone’s house and orchard, and I think 


he must have liked Blackstone himself who was a 
3 


34 BOSTON TOWN. 


quiet, bookish man, living alone by himself, as he had 
lived for four or five years. And I think Blackstone 
liked Winthrop, and was glad to have for a neighbor 
this grave, wise man. Perhaps as he sat under his 
trees, and looked across to Charlestown, he may have 
seen them burying the poor people who died that 
first summer. At any rate it was at his invitation 
that Winthrop came over to Shawmut, and it was in 
the early fall of 1650 that the people moved over.” 

‘September 17,” said Jett, promptly. 

“They must have gone over, some of them, at any 
rate before that day, for it was on that day, the rec- 
ords tell us, that the General Court, which was sitting 
in Charlestown, agreed to call Trimountain Boston.” 

“How many people moved over from Charles- 
town?” asked Benjy. 

‘T don’t think it is possible to tell now, Benjy. 
About a thousand came over with or directly after 
Winthrop’s coming, but of these a good many died, 
and a good many stayed in Charlestown, I think 
likely that the families moved over in parties before 
winter, and that when Winthrop went it was pretty 
well decided that Boston was to have the greater part 
of the people.” 

“ Did they all camp out on top of Beacon Hill ?”’ 
asked Jeff. “If I’d been here I’d have taken the 
tip-top of the hill for my tent, and then when they 
wanted the State House they ’d have had to buy me 
off.” 


THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 35 


“ You would hardly have lasted as long as that, 
though you are a tough little fellow, Jeff, and be- 
sides I think you ’d have shown more good sense.” 

‘¢ Well, where did the man before tritavus build his 
hut ?”’ 

“With the rest of the people, by what was after- 
ward known as the Town Cove. You know I said 
there was a spring near the head of Spring Lane. 
That spring made the centre of the first settlement. 
People don’t generally get on top of the highest hill 
when they settle in a new place; they get under a 
hill for shelter if they can, but at any rate near good 
water for drinking, and if on the sea-coast near a 
harbor for their boats and fishing. Now that was 
just what Winthrop and his company did. There 
was the cove, ending on the right with a bluff hill, 
where they could plant acannon; behind them was 
a circle of hills, on which we are now; and a good 
spring gave them the water they needed. So, you 
may think of the very oldest Boston as right down 
there about the Old State House. The houses were 
scattered along the shore of the cove. You know 
where Lewis Wharf is, though you can’t pick it out 
very well from here. Well, if you follow from there 
along North Street up to the statue of Sam Adams, 
then turn down Dock Square, and keep to the right 
of Faneuil Hall, cross to State Street, keep along 
Kilby to Batterymarch, and then strike into Broad 
Street, and follow that to the foot of High Street, 


36 BOSTON TOWN. 


you will just about follow the line of the old cove. 
The Town Dock was where Faneuil Hall and Quincy 
Market now stand. There, you can make out the 
buildings from here, and only a few years ago you 
could have seen Fort Hill near where you take the 
boat to Hingham.” 
















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































—= —— ss ————— 


Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. 





“ But they did n’t stay always near the cove?” 

‘“ No, they followed the shore in each direction, 
north and south, and spread over the peninsula. I 
will tell you how you can remember the movement 
of the town. Take the meeting-houses as they were 
built, and they will show you the successive neigh- 





THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. BY 


borhoods. The First Church was built in 1632, — 
a small thatched-roof, one-story building, which stood 
on State Street, where 
Brazer’s Building now 
stands. Eight years at- 
terward it was replaced 
by a larger building, 
which stood where Joy’s = 
Building, on Washing- 
ton Street, now stands. 
But come, boys, we 
won't stay up here. We/’ll go down and see the 
spot.” 

So down they climbed from the cupola of the 
State House, and walked along the busy streets. It 
was hard for the boys to imagine the Boston of 1650 
as they walked down State Street and stood before 
Brazer’s Building and looked about them. 

‘“‘ Here stood the little church,” said grandfather ; 
‘and it was very near the houses of the first settlers, 
you see; the water then came up nearly to this 
point. Come a little farther down the street, and I 
will show you how near.” Then they walked as far 
as Merchant’s Row. 

“What, only to here!” said Benjy. 

‘“¢ Yes, the first houses were about here. Here stood 
Samuel Cole’s tavern, the first built in Boston, about 
half way, you see, between State Street and Faneuil 
Hall. Itwason the upper side of the street, looking 


















































































































































The First Church. 


38 BOSTON TOWN. 


out on the water, and houses were about it. Now 
let us go to where the meeting-house stood when 
the people could afford to build a larger and better 
one.” It was not a long walk to Joy’s Building, 
and standing by it, they looked about to see what 
they could see. 

“The old State House looks pretty old,” said 
Benjy, with a critical air. 

“Yes, but it takes the place of the first Town 
House, which was built 
there in 1658, a wooden 
building that stood on 
pillars; the market was 
—. held underneath. Now all 
-,. this was the first great 
centre of the town. Here 
¥! the people lived in houses 
with gardens about them 
and wharves by the water, 
and here opposite the Town House was the first shop, 
as below, a little way down, was the first tavern. 
Well walk to the next centre of the town. As there 
came to be more inhabitants they could not all go 
to the same meeting-house, and in 1650 they built a 
second one.’ The walk to this took them through 
Dock Square again to North Street. | 

“‘ Here stood, until twenty years ago,” said grand- 
father, “an old building which every one was taken 
to see as the oldest house in town. Iam not sure 








THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 39 


that it was the oldest even then, but it was so irreg- 
ular and quaint that it had the name of the Old 
-Cocked Hat. It had queer gables, and the upper 
story projected over the lower, and, although of 
wood, it was covered with a rough cast cement, 

















































































































































































































vi : 
* | wnnnesnT” 
































The Old Cocked Hat. 


which was stuck full of old glass, coarse gravel, and 
odds and ends of things. We really see more of the 
old part of Boston when we get down here at the 
North End than anywhere else. North Street, on 
which we are walking, was in the time of your tri- 
tavus right along the shore of the cove. The street 
is occupied now by warehouses, but then wharves 


40 .... BOSTON. TOWN. 


ran out from it, and it was occupied by houses and 
shops and ship-yards. Here we are at North Square, 
and this was the second great centre. Here stood 
the Second Church, which was built of wood, and 
known as the North Church. ‘Some day we will ex- 
plore other parts of the North End, but to-day we 
will make only one more visit on our way home, and 
that is to the Old South Church, which you know 
well enough. But why is it called Old South Church, 
Benjy?” 

‘“¢ | suppose because it is so old.” 

‘¢ And why is it called South, Jeff?” 

“Tt isn’t at the South End.” 

“ But it used to be. If the First Church was 
near the head of State Street, it was in the centre of 
the town; the north was at the North End, and the 
south, at the head of Milk Street, was at the South 
End then. It was not called the Old South till the 
New South was built in 1715, at the foot of Summer 
Street. These three meeting-houses show the three 
centres of the town, at distances of twenty years. 
The First Church dates from 1630, the North from 
1650, and the South, or third, from 1670, so you can 
have a pretty good idea of the general extent of 
Boston for the first half century. Essex and Boyl- 
ston streets were about the southern limits. Tremont 
Street bounded it on the west, and most of the 
houses were at the North End and around the cove. 
There were no such streets as we now have. The 


THE MAN BEFORE TRITAVUS. 4] 


people drove their cows to the Common, and up the 
sides of Beacon Hill; they carried their grain to the 
mill at Copp’s Hill, or at the foot of Summer Street, 
and the cart paths became by degrees the roads upon 
which houses were built. But here we are at the 
South Church. Close by it stood Governor Win- 
throp’s house, which was taken down for firewood 
when the British occupied Boston at the beginning 
of the Revolution. Here the governor died, and when 
he died, twenty years after the settlement of the town, 
Boston was pretty well established. He was a great 
man, There were other notable people who came 
over with him, but he was the real leader of the town 
and colony ; and one reason why he was so good a 
governor of the colony was that he had learned to 
govern himself.” 

They had turned away from the church, and were 
soon crossing the Common, hurrying home for sup- 
per. 


CHAPTER III. 
THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 


THE next day was Sunday, and as they were walk- 
ing home from church in the morning they came by 
Charles Street to the foot of Mount Vernon Street. 
Instead of turning up, grandfather kept on. 

‘Where are you going, grandfather ?”” asked Jet- 
fries. 

‘Come with me,” he said, “a few steps; I want 
to show you something.” So they all walked with 
him to Pinckney Street. ‘“ There!” said he, “ we 
are pretty near the water here, and at the foot of a 
tolerably steep hill. The town has not changed so 
much here as in some other places, but the hill has 
been cut away and used to fill up the low land on 
the river. Where we stand used to be rather a bold 
headland, which was called Blackstone’s Point, for it 
was at the end of the farm of William Blackstone, 
who lived here four or five years before Winthrop 
came. ‘The line of Charles Street was the boundary 
here of the Charles River. Just where his house was 
is not certain, but it was on this hill somewhere,’ — 
they were now climbing Pinckney Street, — “and 
most likely not far from his spring, which is thought: 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 43 


to have been here at Louisburg Square. He came 
over probably about 1623, for after the Pilgrims 
- went to Plymouth there was more than one attempt 
at settling on.the shores of Massachusetts Bay before 
the great migration of Winthrop’s company. Black- 
stone, however, was the only white man who lived 
on the peninsula of Boston, or Shawmut, as the In- 
dians called it. He was a young man, only about 
twenty-eight years old when he came. He had been 
a student at Cambridge University in England ; he 
was unmarried, and a shy man, fond of books, of 
which he brought a little library to this lonely place. 
Before Charlestown was settled he had only one or. 
two white neighbors, — Thomas Walford, on the 
Mystic River, and Samuel Maverick, at Noddle’s 
Island, which afterward becamé East Boston. I do 
not think he cared for neighbors, for it was not very 
long, only four or five years after Winthrop came, 
that he moved again, this time to a place in Rhode 
Island, near Lonsdale, where his grave is pointed out 
still. He named his place Study Hill, and occupied 
himself with his books and papers; but after his 
death these were all destroyed by the Indians, who 
burned his house during King Philip’s war.” | 

“‘ Perhaps if they had been kept,” said his daugh- 
ter, “we should have known something more about 
him and about what he thought of Winthrop.” 

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the old gentleman. 
“ But he must have been on pretty good terms with 


44 BOSTON TOWN. 


the people here, for he came back once in a while, — 
it was only thirty-five miles away, — and he married 
a Boston woman. He sold all his right to the land 
here excepting six acres, and with the money bought 
a stock of cows which he took to Study Hill.” 

“Let ’s go to Lonsdale some time,” said Benjy, 
“and dig about Study Hill, Perhaps old Mr. Black- 
stone buried his papers there, after all. Would n’t 
it be a famous thing to find them!” 

‘We need n’t go so far,” said grandfather, poking 
his key into the key-hole of the door, for they had 
reached their own house. ‘I’ve got them here.” 

“ What!” 

‘Yes, upstairs in my library. When I was a 
youngster, though older than you boys, I used to im- 
agine oid Mr. Blackstone living at Lonsdale, among 
his books and in his orchard, and wished I had his 
papers. So, as the original ones were really burned 
by the Indians, I made up a new set, — not as many 
as he wrote, to be sure, — and I have a great mind 
to read you a little from them. It won't be the real 
thing, but we have to put up with a good deal of 
make-believe nowadays. So this evening, after tea, 
I will see what I can find among William Blackstone’s 
papers.” 

It was as Grandfather Callender had said. He 
had amused himself years before with keeping a 
diary, imagining himself to be William Blackstone. 
He had not looked at his papers for a long time, but 





THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 45 


all this chat with the boys, and his walk yesterday, 
had brought the matter up freshly, and he went to 
his desk to find the diary. He found it, but found 
also with it, what he had forgotten, a little sketch 
which he had made of Blackstone’s invitation to 
Winthrop to come over from Charlestown ; and when 
he looked ‘it over, he made up his mind that he 
would read that to the children instead of trying to 
entertain them with passages out of his imaginary 
diary. Especially he was willing to read it, because 
it would, perhaps, help the children to understand 
why Winthrop and his friends came across the At- 
lantic at all. So in the evening, after their early 
Sunday evening tea, when they had sung, “‘ God bless 
our native land,” grandfather put on his spectacles, 
sat erect in his leathern arm-chair before the fire, 
while the boys sat on stools with their heads in their 
mother’s lap, and so read aloud his sketch of 


WINTHROP’S VISIT TO BLACKSTONE, 


It was a sultry day in August, 1650. The wind 
was blowing from the south, and whoever had work 
to do longed for some cool shade. A little line of 
huts and booths upon the north side of Charles River, 
under cover of the hill there, felt the full force of 
the hot sun and the warm breeze. There were sick 
men and women and children in the tents, who 
breathed with difficulty. They had few comforts or 
conveniences, and the water even which was brought 


46 BOSTON TOWN. 


to quench their thirst was warm and brackish. The 
figure of John Winthrop, a grave man, a little over 
forty years only in age, but looking old and care- 
worn already, was seen moving along the paths which 
led to the rude dwellings. He came finally to what 
was known as the Great House, where the principal 
men of the little colony lived until they should build 
houses for themselves and their families. He found 
his dear friend, Mr. Isaac Johnson, sitting in the 
doorway. He looked wearied and discouraged. 

“ You find me but a weight on our little planta- 
tion, I fear,” he said, and rose as Mr. Winthrop came 
toward him. 

‘““ Nay, rest here, my good brother,” said the gov- 
ernor, taking off his hat and brushing the hair back 
from his forehead. “ We can ill afford to have you 
overcome with sickness ; and this burning sun smites 
more fiercely than it was used to do in England.” 

“'Truly; and I have been pondering the words, 
‘There shall be no sun there.’ The Lady Arbella 
suffered much from this sultry heat.” 

‘“‘She has gone, indeed, to a better country. She 
plucked up her stakes to come into the wilderness ; 
but it was only a brief passage through the desert 
to the Canaan that lies beyond.” 

““T have been looking at this narrow river,” said 
Mr. Johnson, “and have half persuaded myself that 
it is a Jordan for our poor people of God, and that 
the promised land lies on the other side of it. Those 


? 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 47 


high hills look as if they might give shelter from the 
sun and from the cold blasts which we must yet de- 
fend ourselves against. I fear much that I have 
grown restless since I parted with my dear wife.” 

“ Have patience, good Mr. Johnson. I doubt not 
that the way will be made plain to us. I have my- 
self looked across the river with some thought, and 
while you were absent in Salem, Mr. William Black- 
stone, who hath a dwelling there, came once to see 
me. He was a man of few words, but I gleaned 
from him that Mishawmut, as the Indians call Tri- 
mountain, was a fairer spot than this, and, more- 
over, that there was abundance of water there.” 

“T have a longing for a draught of pure water.” 
At this moment, though they had heard no sound, 
they were aware of a silent, dusky figure standing 
before them. It was an Indian, who, when he had 
their attention, uttered no sound but handed to Mr. 
Winthrop a folded paper. The governor opened it 
and read it. His eye lighted, and he turned again 
to Mr. Johnson. 

“It is from Mr. Blackstone. There is verily a 
strange Providence that while we were speaking of 
him this message should come.” 

“ What saith he? Read it; the savage cannot 
understand.” 

«Worthy Mr. Winthrop. It grieves me to know 
that there hath been much sickness in your com- 
pany, for so have I learned from good Mr. Fuller, 


48 BOSTON TOWN. 


and that more especially there is dearth of good 
water. It is not so here, but there are good springs 
and the country is pleasant to dwell in. If you will 
come hither with the Indian, I will show you the 
land. Your poor friend and servant, William Black- 
stone.’ ”’ 

“Tt is friendly,” said Mr. Johnson. “ The hand 
of God is in it. I pray you go and spy out the 
land. Haply it may be a home for us.” 

The Indian had looked silently from one to the 
other, and with some awe at the bit of paper which 
he had brought. Now the governor turned to him, 
and motioned him to lead the way. The two passed 
down the path and entered the canoe which had 
been drawn up on the beach. The savage quickly 
paddled into the stream, and now taking advantage 
of the current, now bending his strength to resist it, 
made for the opposite shore. The governor felt the 
coolness of the breeze upon the water, but would fain 
have protected his head from the beating rays of 
the sun. ‘They passed round a point, and, avoiding 
a marsh which edged the shore, brought up at the 
foot of a rough shoulder of a higher hill above them. 
There was a pebbly beach there, and a path climbed 
the acclivity. Up this went the Indian, followed by 
the governor. Arrived at the top, they were in a 
little upland valley, sheltered by a higher hill, and 
showing signs of cultivation. There was an orchard 
of young apple-trees, and a well worn path led toa 


2 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 49 


spring a little further down. They were in sight, too, 
of a rude cottage of hewn wood, and, as they came to 
the door, the occupant 
rose, closed the book 
which he had been 
reading, and, placing 
it within, came out to 
receive his guest. The 
Indian turned away, 
and in a moment was 
invisible, having swift- 
ly descended the path Blackstone's House. 

by which he had just brought the white man. 

Mr. Blackstone was younger than the governor 
both in years and in countenance. He had a placid, 
thoughtful face, and he was dressed in a faded canon- 
ical suit, eked out by more incongruous dress. He 
stood thin and tall, and looked shyly aside as the 
governor stretched out his hand. He took it and led 
him to a rude bench in the shade of the house. 

“You have a goodly garden here, Mr. Blackstone,” 
said Winthrop. “It is a rest to my eyes to look 
upon it.” 

“It is my only companion save my books and my 
poor pen,” said the recluse. 

“Tt is a paradise indeed.” 

“Aye, and a paradise with apples in it,’ replied 
Blackstone, with a half smile. “I sometimes fear 

4 


































































































50 BOSTON TOWN. 


there may be a temptation in this garden waiting 
- for me.” 

“There may even be temptation for one who lives 
apart from his fellows,” said ¢he governor, gravely. 

“True ; but I have escaped for the time at least 
from what is trying England sorely now, the tempta- 
tion of the lord bishops. If I mistake not, your com- 
pany has come hither for the same reason.” 

‘We are not unmindful,” said Winthrop, cau- 
tiously, “ of the advantage of being so far away from 
the strife which is stirring in our poor church. The 
heathen are come into the inheritance of God, and 
we sit by the waters of Babylon.” 

‘Then you hope for a return to Jerusalem ?”’ 

‘It may not be in this generation,” said the gov- 
ernor; “and we know not but we are making a 
place for the ark of the covenant to abide in.” 

“Tam told that you have brought with you the 
Charter of the king.” 

“We have brought it. It was better so. We 
would be protected from our enemies, and they are 
many.” 

‘¢ Mr. Winthrop,” said the hermit, turning full upon 
him, “I am a stranger to England now. It is seven 
years since I left her shores. Tell me, what is to be 
the end of these things?”’ The governor was silent 
a moment. ‘Then he said : — 

‘‘ Mr. Blackstone, it is not for me to foretell the 
latter days. We have, indeed, a goodly company of 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 51 


us, separated ourselves from England, and have come 
into this wilderness. We could not see our children 
- growing up under the anger of God. The king has 
evil counselors. The church is dragged away from 
the God of Israel by the carnally-minded bishops. 
It was time to come out from the ceiled houses and 
dwell in tents. Here we have made a covenant with 
our God, and we trust here to keep the unity of the 
spirit in the bond of peace. We are brethren knit 
together in one communion, and if we live and oc- 
cupy this land, I trust it may yet be said of suc- 
ceeding plantations, ‘ The Lord make it like that of 
New England.’ ” 

‘Then it is anew England that you would make 
here ?”’ 

“Yes, it is a new England.” 

“¢ And will the king suffer you to live in peace?”’ 

‘We have the King of kings on our side, and we 
have his majesty’s Charter.” Blackstone half con- 
cealed a smile. — 

“It is well to have safeguards. Does the Charter 
define your government? If you come hither to live 
on my land, know that I occupy under Sir Ferdinando 
Gorges’ patent ; and, I crave your pardon, but what 
manner of laws have you made for your govern- 
ment ?”’ 

“We have a covenant, and we are governed by 
the laws of England and by the Word of God.” 

“ And you will leave me in peace here in my or- 
chard ?” 


52 BOSTON TOWN. 


“We can have no quarrel with you, good Mr. 
Blackstone. We will buy your title to so much land 
as you will part with, if it seem wise and well to 
bring the company hither.” 

“T doubt it not,” said the hermit, rising. “ If it 
please you, and you are rested, come with me and I 
will show you the land.” The two climbed the high 
hill back of the house, and from its summit looked 
off upon the sparkling water of the bay, and down 
upon the other side upon the poor little settlement 
at Charlestown. They walked down the slope, and, 
avoiding the marshy places, came to the cove which 
received the waters of the bay upon the eastern shore 
of the peninsula. Winthrop’s eye followed the shore 
from there. 

“That might be a well fortified place,’ he said 
presently, pointing to the rough hill which afterward 
became Fort Hill. 

“Then you fear enemies?” said Blackstone, slyly ; 
“enemies that come by water ?” 

“We are encompassed about by foes,’ said the 
governor. ‘ We expect no peaceful, continuous pos- 
session here.” Blackstone led him to the bubbling 
spring, near which Winthrop afterward placed his 
house, and as they turned away they went toward 
the high hill again. They stopped a moment at its 
foot and looked about them. ‘They were in one of 
the greenest, pleasantest spots they had seen, and 
Winthrop, taking a broken stick which lay near, 
thrust it into the ground where they stood. 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 53 


“This shall be our most worthy Mr. Johnson’s 
lot,’ said he, pleasantly. “He is the first settler 
_ here after you, Mr. Blackstone.” The hermit did 
not reply. In truth, when Mr. Winthrop drove the 
stake into the ground he felt a sharp pain in his 
mind, as if his quiet life was now rudely broken in 
upon. He had felt a pity for the unfortunate com- 
pany, and in his compassion had suddenly offered to 
give up his tranquil home, but now that he was taken 
at his word he as suddenly repented. He was silent 
for the rest of the walk and a moodiness came over 
him. 

“ You will find us peaceful neighbors,” said the 
governor as he finally left him on the shore, where 
the Indian was in waiting with his boat. 

‘“‘Itmay be,” said the hermit to himself as he turned 
away, “ but I fear much that I have escaped the tyr- 
anny of the lord bishops to fall into that of the lord 
brethren, and that I shall like these latter no better 
than the others. But I like this Mr. Winthrop. He 
is a just man and fears God, and indeed if the worst 
comes I can move myself farther away. ‘The wilder- 
ness has many solitary places.” 

The governor after he had once seen the penin- 
sula had no longer any doubt that it was wise to 
move the company thither. They were not all pre- 
pared to go, and some who had already staked out 
their farms in Charlestown resolved to remain there, 
but the more part gladly made ready to sit down, as 


54 BOSTON TOWN. 


they termed it, across the river. Of these Mr. Isaac 
Johnson was one. He had a great longing to get 
there, and spoke often to Mr. Winthrop while the 
preparations were going on. 

‘“‘T could almost believe,” he said one day, “ that 
there I should be nearer to my dear wife.” 

“Tt is not far hence to where the Lady Arbella is,” 
said Winthrop, “and I would that we might make 
the place a memorial to her. It was in Boston that 
she lived, as did many of our company. There, too, is 
our beloved Mr. Cotton; and since the larger part of 
us are from Lincolnshire, it is right fitting that we 
should give the new plantation that name.” And so 
it was determined, and the record was made on the 
17th of September, “ that Trimontaine shall be called 
Boston,” and so this day of the month is the baptis- 
mal day of the old town. Mr. Isaac Johnson, as the 
days went by, drooped and could not be removed. 
He died while the rest were one by one passing across 
to the new settlement, and thither his body was borne 
and buried where he would have lived. He was the 
first to be laid away there, and the ground was hal- 
lowed by his sepulture. So one after another desired 
to be laid beside him, and the old burying-ground 
about King’s Chapel became the first resting place 
on the peninsula. 


‘And was Mr. Blackstone buried there ? ”’ asked 
Benjy | 


THE HERMIT OF BOSTON. 55 


‘¢ No, he was buried, as I said, at his new home in 
Rhode Island. He grew uneasy as the peninsula 
became a busy thrifty settlement. It was no longer 
the place for a hermit. It had become the chief 
town of the New England which Winthrop and his 
fellows desired to see.” 


CHAPTER IV. 
A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 


THAT evening, after tea, as the boys and their 
mother and grandfather sat before the fire in the 
library, the talk fell upon the old Boston which they 
had walked about in the afternoon. 

“Would n’t John Winthrop be surprised,” said 
Benjy, “if he really could step down and walk along 
Court Street! ” 

“T think the people standing there would be the 
most astonished,” said Jeff. 

“Oh you know what I mean. Of course if he 
could step down, no one would be surprised at that, 
but how odd Boston would look to him. He would 
think himself back in London, would n’t he, grand- 
pa?” 

“T think he would be puzzled to see the likeness 
to the London which he left in 1630, for the Boston 
of to-day is very different from the London of two 
hundred and fifty years ago. The people, for in- 
stance, on Court Street to day are dressed quite the 
same as those on the Strand, but you noticed how 
differently Winthrop appeared.” 


A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 57 


“ But doesn’t the sculptor dress him in robes which 
look better than the common dress ?”’ asked the boys’ 
mother. 

“Sculptors are apt to take what advantage they 
can of a possible graceful dress, in place of an ugly 
familiar one, but I don’t think there is much dif- 
ference. in this case. That stiff ruff was worn 
about the neck, as you see it in the statue; the shoes 
were low and peaked, and large knots or rosettes 
were worn at the instep. In place of the coat, waist- 
coat, and trousers, there was a doublet, not unlike a 
loose frock, gathered about the waist with a belt, 
and under that a waistcoat, to which was fastened 
what was known as trunk-hose coming to the knees, 
and then long stockings reached up to meet the 
trunk-hose. The sleeves of the doublet were often 
slashed, that 1s cut with open bands, to show the linen 
beneath, and a cloak or mandilion was worn over 
all. Winthrop was probably moderate in his dress, 
for he set an example to others in his way of living, 
but some of the richer colonists used to wear gold 
and silver lace. J wonder that the sculptor has 
made Winthrop wear low shoes instead of great boots 
which were worn then by gentlemen, and would seem 
to have been more appropriate to one landing from a 
ship.” 

“‘T think the ruff was ugly,” said Jeff, “and I 
think it must have been worse than a stand-up collar. 
I have seen old gentlemen wearing collars which 
looked as if they might saw off their ears.” 


58 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Don’t make fun of your old grandfather, you 
rogue! But the collars which we wear now are the 
old ruff which has grown smaller and smaller. Besides, 
the ruff was worn by gentlemen, by those who were 
of better birth and who did not work with their hands, 
or if they worked dressed themselves very differently 
for the time they did work. The common colonist’s 
dress was different from the gentleman’s. In place 
of a ruff he wore bands, or a kind of broad flat collar 
with cord and tassel; then his clothes were of much 
coarser material ; his breeches were made of leather, 
he had a leathern girdle, his clothes were fastened to- 
gether with hooks and eyes, and his coarse shoes had 
wooden heels. His hat was lined with leather, and 
his dress generally was to stand hard usage. At that 
time there was a much sharper distinction between 
different classes, and people were addressed accord- 
ing to their rank in life. There was only now and 
then a lord or baronet in Boston; the highest title 
was Mr. or Mrs., and that title was given only to 
certain people. The governor and the higher mag- 
istrates and ministers were addressed as Mr. and their 
wives as Mrs., but the great body of people were 
called Goodman or Goodwife, and servants had no 
title at all. When a man who was called Mr. had 
disgraced himself, he lost the title of Mr. and became 
Goodman; and if a Goodman fell away, I think he 
lost that title.” 

“ Father,” said his daughter, ‘‘ I wish you would 


A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 59 


give us an idea of how a person lived in Boston in 
the early days of the colony. Take a Mr. and a 
Goodman and a servant.” 

‘¢ And a boy,” added Jeff. 

‘¢ One would think they were all males in Boston,” 
said grandfather. 

“ Oh, you could n’t tell about the men and boys 
without saying something about the women and 
girls.” 

“ Well,” said the old gentleman, after reflecting a 
moment, ‘I should like to do it, but you must give 
me a little time to think it over, for it is not alto- 
gether easy to tell. You see the people of that time 
in Boston, although they kept records and diaries, 
did not at first tell very much about the little things 
which now interest us ; they had a great deal more to 
say about their discussions in church, and you would 
not care so much about that, but I will see what I 
can do.” 


It was two or three evenings after this that Grand- 
father Callender said he was ready to tell them what 
he knew of the way people lived in Boston in 1649. 

“That was nearly twenty years after the town was 
settled, you know,” he said ; ‘‘ and I have taken that 
time because in twenty years things had become . 
pretty well established, and there were boys and 
girls growing up who had never seen England, yes, 
and children born whose mothers and fathers had no 


60 BOSTON TOWN. 


recollection of England, but only knew Boston and 
Boston life. Besides it was the year when Governor 
John Winthrop died, and I never think of Boston in 
those earliest days without thinking of that man who 
was the best example of the founders of our old town. 
As long as he lived he was the chief man, and his 
word and life had a great deal to do in giving charac- 
ter to the town. Let me try to picture what one of 
John Winthrop’s days may have been during the last 
year of his lite. 

‘“‘ He lived, as you remember I told you, where the 
Old South Church now stands, in a two-story wooden 
house. A garden was about it, and from the windows 
he could look out upon the harbor and the islands 
with their farms, which were dotted about. His 
children were grown and no longer lived with him; 
his son John was Governor of Connecticut; in his 
loneliness he had married again, and he and his wife 
lived alone in the house. He had some land, but the 
greater part of his property was gone. He was Goy- 
ernor of Massachusetts, and so the chief magistrate 
of the colony, and his time was divided between his 
private and his public affairs. We will suppose it to 
be a Thursday: the morning bell had rung at half 
after four, when, I have little doubt, the governor 
and his household rose ; atter breakfast the governor 
walked along the road from his house to the market- 
place, where now stands the old State House. Here 
the farmers from the neighboring country had brought 


A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 61 


in their vegetables and fruit, although the gardens 
and orchards in town furnished most that the gentle- 
men needed for their tables; here, too, were the meat 
‘and the game which the Indians and farmers’ sons had 
shot and trapped. The meal which the governor’s 
wife used was from grain grown, I suppose, on their 
out of town farm at Ten Hills, on the Mystic, and 
brought to the windmill on Copp’s Hill, or to that 
which stood where the West Church on Cambridge 
Street now stands, or perhaps to that near the foot of 
Summer Street. A green lane led from it by the 
water-side, and up what is now Milk Street, to the 
governors garden, and if he were walking he may 
have come upon his wife, pail in hand, going to the 
spring near by for water. Perhaps, when he had 
been through the market, he went down the road that 
led to the water, and coming near the site of the first 
meeting-house, stopped to speak with William Davis, 
at his apothecary shop, about the pump which Mr. 
Venner and some neighbors wanted to place near by ; 
it would need to be talked overin General Court. He 
may have gone a little farther to the inn of the Three 
Mariners to see the innkeeper, and be sure that there 
had been no'disorder about the house ; to say a word 
to some idler sunning himself on the wharf: he had 
himself in his own house long set the example of 
sobriety by declining to have healths drunk at the 
table, and lately a law had been passed making it a 
penal offence. If he continued his walk to the Town 


62 BOSTON TOWN. 


Dock he would inquire what news had been heard of 
the fishing vessels, or of those which traded to the 
West Indies: he had for his part a little venture in 
the Blessing of the Bay, which he had built, the year 
after the settlement, near his farm on the Mystic: 
they might be looking for a ship from London with 
news from home. If the ship came in the master 
would carry Mr. Winthrop’s letters to him, and bring 
him news of the war in England, for this was when 
King Charles I. was fighting the Parliament, and 
there were anxious men among his subjects in Bos- 
ton. His walk would take him along the shore to 
Captain Nehemiah Bourne’s ship-yard, near where 
Union Wharf is now; he had been one of three men 
appointed to look the ground over near Captain 
Bourne’s house, to determine on a proper place for 
building a ship, and the business was growing and 
prospering. 

‘Very likely he was to attend a meeting of the 
Great and General Court, and would go in the mid- 
dle of the morning to the meeting-house to meet 
there the other magistrates and the ministers. Possi- 
bly as he went in he passed by the stocks and saw a 
poor drunken wretch sitting behind it with his feet 
and hands thrust through the holes, and his head 
hanging down for shame. In those days men who 
offended against the laws were punished in their 
persons more than they are now; they were whipped 
at the whipping-post, made to stand on the pillory, 


A DAY Vil JOAN VWINTOHROF. 63 


or sit in the stocks, or have their feet chained in the 
bilboes. They were held to have done that for which 
they should be ashamed, and so they were punished 
‘in a way to bring them to shame, for every one that 
went along the road could see them in this sorry 
plight. The poor Indian was very often in the stocks, 
for many of the laws were not very intelligible to 
him. 

“It was in the meeting-house, I think, that the 
General Court was held, and all sorts of questions 
would come up before it, — questions which are not 
now discussed in our legislature, but which did not 
seem out of place in a meeting-house. The magis- 
trates and the people for whom they were making 
laws were as much members of churches as they were 
towns-people, and they settled religious affairs in the 
General Court. There were, to be sure, a good many 
in the earliest days who were not church members, 
and these had nothing to say about the government. 
Only those who were members of churches had a 
right to vote, for Winthrop and his friends were try- 
ing very hard to have a state which should be gov- 
erned exactly according to the will of God, and they 
thought that only those who were bound together in 
their churches were able to know just what that will 
was. They made mistakes, but they were not the 
mistakes of men who were selfish or seeking to get 
some advantage over others. 

“It may be that on his way home to dinner Govy- 


64 BOSTON TOWN. 


ernor Winthrop stopped to see Mr. Woodbridge, at 
the school-house in School Street, where King’s Chapel 
stands. The street was hardly more than a lane 
leading up to Centry Hill, but the little school-house 
stood on it, and so it got its name. ‘The school-master 
had fifty pounds a year anda house to live in; he 
had one usher, too, to help him. The school was for 
boys, and they were taught Latin, for in a state which 
guarded its church so jealously, great care was taken 
that the race of learned men should never die out. 
The boys, no doubt, had to study hard, but they had 
plenty of fun Iam sure after school was out. Think 
of trapping rabbits and hunting foxes at the back of 
Beacon Hill, and what famous slopes there were for 
coasting down in those days, straight away with no 
houses about. They had work enough, too, — work 
in the fields and on the wharves, for the town looked 
out that there should be no idlers. If fathers and 
mothers did not set them to work, the magistrates did. 

‘* When Mr. Winthrop went home to dinner it is 
very likely that his wite had a story to tell him of 
some family in need. He looked after his poorer 
neighbors as other of the chief men did. He thought 
it a sin to let his neighbor suffer. There is a pretty 
story told of him shortly after they had moved over 
to Boston from Charlestown. No ship had come in 
for a long time, and they had passed a severe winter, 
the people being so poor that they were forced to 
live on clams and mussels, acorns and ground-nuts. 


A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 65 


You see they had not yet been able to plant the 
ground and reap a harvest, and their provisions had 
given out. The governor had his last batch of bread 
in the oven, and was at his door-way giving the last 
handful of meal in his barrel to a poor man who had 
none, when suddenly off in the harbor appeared the 
long-looked for ship; and so on that twenty-second 
of February they had a Day of Thanksgiving, for 
their Thanksgiving and Fast Days were not on cer- 
tain regular days, but were appointed from time to 
time whenever the people had anything notable to 
give thanks for, or to be sorry for. There is another 
story told by Cotton Mather, which I will read to 
you,” and grandfather took down Mather’s Magnalia 
from the shelf. 

“<¢There was one passage of his charity that was 
perhaps a little unusual: in an hard and long winter, 
when wood was very scarce at Boston, a man gave 
him private information that a needy person in the 
neighborhood stole wood sometimes from his pile ; 
whereupon the governor, in a seeming anger, did 
reply, “Does he so? I’ll take a course with him; 
go, call that man to me. I[’Il warrant you I'll cure 
him of stealing.” When the man came, the governor 
considering that if he had stolen it was more out of 
necessity than disposition, said unto him: “ Friend, it 
is a severe winter, and I doubt you are but meanly 
provided for wood; wherefore I would have you 
supply yourself at my wood-pile till this cold season 

5 


66 BOSTON TOWN. 


’ 


be over.’ And he then merrily asked his friends, 
whether he had not effectually cured this man of 
stealing his wood ?’ 

‘‘He was very ready indeed to provide for the 
needy, and grew poor by reason of giving so freely 
from his own store. In after days the town built a 
granary where Park Street Church now stands, and 
the name remains with the burying-ground next to 
it. There grain was stored, and the poor could buy 
at a price very near cost. 

“We have been playing that it was Thursday. 
Thursday was market-day, and it was also Lecture- 
day. One of the ministers gave a lecture in the 
meeting-house, and when you think that the people 
were set on having a perfect church and a perfect 
state you will understand that they were ready to 
give their time when not at work to hearing their 
ministers and pondering knotty questions. Nothing 
seemed to them of so much importance as ordering 
their lives according to the law of God, and they 
wanted something that should tell them just what 
that law was. They thought the Bible the most im- 
portant book possible for this, and as they believed 
themselves to be chosen by God to be brought into 
this wilderness, so they read especially that part of 
the Bible which told of the children of Israel and 
their difficulties, and tried to make the rules which 
were given to the Jews fit their case. Those rules 
were based on great and lasting laws, so that the 


A DAY WITH JOHN WINTHROP. 67 


Puritans in Boston, while often wrong in seeking to 
apply Jewish rules to New England men and women, 
never got very far away from wholesome truths, and 
they believed with all their hearts that everybody 
in Boston should be upright and fear God, that the 
children should be obedient, and that whoever did 
wrong should be punished; and they wanted every- 
one to think just as they did. They were downright 
English people, — stubborn, and unable to see how 
anybody could differ from them and be right. 

““ Now, the day over, we can imagine Mr. Winthrop 
at home writing a letter to his son John, the Governor 
of Connecticut. Upon the wall hangs the portrait of 
him, said to be by the famous painter Van Dyck, and 
now in the Senate Chamber at the State House. His 
books, forty or fifty in all, are in a chest or on some 
shelves. At his death they were given to Harvard 
College, but were all burned in 1764, in the fire which 
destroyed the old Library; we have a list of them, and 
can see that his reading was chiefly in the old Latin 
classics, or in Latin or English commentaries on the 
Bible. If it was winter there was a fire on the hearth, 
for stoves had not yet come in, and candles burned 
on the table. He had received letters from his son 
by an Indian messenger. There was no regular postal 
system, and people depended on chance travelers or 
on such messengers as might be sent on purpose. It 
was a common thing to employ Indians, who were — 
hardy and fleet, on such errands. This Indian may 


68 BOSTON TOWN. 


have been bidden wait for the return letters, and the 
governor writing to his son would tell him the latest 
news he had received from England, — news which 
to-day the plainest person could read in his morning 
newspaper, but which then came laboriously by ship 
only to the chief men; and Mr. Winthrop would re- 
peat what he had heard to his son, not as a bit of 
gossip, but because it might make a world of differ- 
ence to them and their colonies whether Cromwell or 
Charles were victorious. ‘The news out of England, 
he writes at one time ‘is very sad; all the counties 
are for the king save Yorkshire ;’ and then, ‘Our 
news is sad at home also: God hath visited our fam- 
ily and taken from us your good sister Adam ;’ that 
is, Adam Winthrop’s wife ; and so he would go on to 
give news of the family and a little account of busi- 
ness. But his letters were chiefly of public aftairs, 
for when he came to America and engaged in the 
new colony it was not so much to mend his own 
fortunes, which would have fared better in England, 
but because he would help forward a_ settlement 
where God’s people could live honest lives. 

“* While the governor was writing, the Indian mes- 
senger was maybe hobnobbing with the governor’s 
servant, who was an Indian. The Indians were some- 
times taken as servants and trained, but the colo- 
nists had hard times with these wild men. The gov- 
ernor and others like him were quite as anxious to 
teach them religion as to get proper service out of 


A DAY Witt JOHN. WIN LOOP. 69 


them, but the people were in constant fear in the 
early days of the colony lest the Indians should prove 
treacherous, and they made stringent laws, by which 
it was necessary to get permission of the Court to 
keep an Indian, and 
fire-arms and even 
sticks were forbid- 
den them. 

“ At length the 
nine oclock _ bell 
rang, as it has con- 
tinued to ring al- 
most to this day, and 
covering up the fire 
with the ashes, and 
having his evening 
devotions, the gov- 
ernor’s day was 
ended.” 

It was pretty plain 
that the children’s 
day was ended too. 
Benjy was fast asleep, 
and though Jeff was 
sitting bolt upright, his eyes had a fixed look which 
showed that he was trying hard to keep awake but 
could fall asleep in an instant. 

‘Wake up, Benjy!” cried his grandfather. “ My 
sermon is ended. Go to bed, boys; I can’t expect 

















Statue of Winthrop at Mount Auburn. 


70 BOSTON TOWN. 


youngsters to care as much for these things as I do, 
but it won’t do you any harm to hear a little of them; 
and for my part I’m glad that when I lay my old 
bones away in Mount Auburn, Governor Winthrop 
will be sitting up all night for me in the chapel, with 
his hands clasped on his knee.” 

“Making a sound like money jingling,” said his 
daughter. 

“O Sally, Sally ! That’s just what I have thought, 
but I never said it.” 


CHAPTER V. 
THE RED INDIAN AND THE PALE FACE. 


It happened about this time that there were pub- 
lic meetings held in Boston in behalf of the Ponca 
Indians, and the newspapers had much to say about 
their wrongs. The children came home one day in 
some excitement, for they had met Miss Bright Eyes 
on their way home from school. 

“‘ We knew it was she,” said Jeff eagerly, “for 
Jack Khot, who was with us, heard her speak the 
other evening, and he took off his hat to her.” 

“Yes,” said Benjy, “and she bowed and smiled 
back at him and at us.” 

“Now that was curious,’ said grandfather. “I 
wonder if she knew his name.” 

“ Whose? Jack's?” 

ay OS, 5 

“TI don’t believe she did. He’s one of the big 
boys, but he does n’t know many of the fellows. He 
used to live in Roxbury.” 

“Of course he did,” said grandfather greatly 
amused. ‘“Tritavus met him there, and Atavus 
might have seen him an old man, when Atavus was 
a school-boy like you, Jeffries.” 


"9 BOSTON TOWN, 


“Oh, you are talking of one of Jack’s ancestors I 
suppose.” 

“T don’t know if he can trace his family back to 
John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians; but if he can 
he ought to be proud.” 

“T’ve heard of him,” said Benjy. ‘“‘ He made a 
Bible for the Indians.”’ 

“Yes, and so rare are the copies now that when 
one is sold, it brings more than a thousand dollars.” 

‘“T should n’t think there would be any Indians rich 
enough to pay that,” said Benjy. ‘The only ones | 
ever saw at Bangor could never have bought it.” 

“And the man who does buy the Indian Bible 
‘cannot read it,” said grandfather. ‘‘ He only buys it 
as a curiosity.” 

‘What little trace the Indians have left of them- 
selves about here,” said the boys’ mother. 

“ Very little indeed. The name Shawmut is almost 
the only sign of them in Boston.” 

“There ’s India Wharf,” said Benjy. 

“ Hoh!” said Jeff. 

‘“‘ Benjy is not so far out of the way, Jeff. You 
know the Indians here got the name because the first 
voyagers thought they had found India when they 
found America.” 

“Then there is Indian corn.” 

“ Yes, and Indian file. When you boys walk in In- 
dian file, you are using a name that came from the way 
our ancestors said Indians went through the woods, 


THE RED INDIAN AND THE PALE FACE. 73 


where they had to ‘ go one abreast’ as an old writer 
says.” 

“But, grandfather, were there never any Indians 
‘in Boston ?” 

‘None were living here when Winthrop came, or 
Blackstone before him, so far as we know, but for all 
that the town bought its land of the Indians.” 

“1 thought Blackstone sold it to the town.” 

‘So he did, but long afterward it turned out that 
when Winthrop came to Boston Chickataubut, who 
was the most prominent Indian in the neighborhood, 
made a deed to the English of all the land on the 
peninsula. It was half a century from the settle- 
ment of Boston that anything was said about it, and 
it was a good many years after that before the deed 
was recorded. I suppose Winthrop wanted to secure 
as good a title as possible. They had the Charter, 
and Blackstone’s deed and Chickataubut’s, and_be- 
sides they had possession of the land, and that was, 
perhaps, the strongest claim of all.” 

‘“‘ But were n't there Indians about Boston ?” 

“Oh yes; no one could travel to Plymouth, or 
any of the neighboring settlements, without meeting 
them. They hunted and sold their game to the 
whites; they were their messengers, as I told you the 
other day; they sometimes were servants, and they 
liked, some of them, to stroll about the town, and, I 
am sorry to say, they caught the vices of the town 
very readily. Do you remember Samuel Cole’s tav- 
ern that I told you about?” 


74 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘It was on Merchant’s Row.” 

“ Yes, and there in 1636 the governor entertained 
Miantonomah, an Indian sachem, who visited Boston. 
Nowadays, you know, when a distinguished person 
comes to town as a guest of the city, he is provided 
with rooms at the Brunswick, or Parker House, or 
some other hotel, and a dinner given him. It’s the 
same thing. It was just the same in 1631, when 
Governor Winthrop entertained Chickataubut at his 
own house. I suppose he would like to have sent 
him to an inn, but there was none then, so he had 
him at his table, and gave him cheese and pease when 
he went away. Chickataubut gave him a hogshead 
of Indian corn, and Winthrop sent him to the tailor’s 
and gave him a full suit of clothes. I don’t believe 
an Englishman like Winthrop relished such close 
quarters with a wild Indian, but the town was weak, 
and they must needs keep on good terms with their 
neighbors. Besides, the best of the whites really did 
want to treat them as their neighbors, to do as they 
would be done by; and in their laws they tried to be 
perfectly just between a white man and an Indian.” 

“ But they got into fights,” interrupted Jeff. 

-“ Yes, they got into fights, and there was more 
than one reason. No doubt the chief reason was, 
that the white man showed that he was pushing his 
settlements this way and that, and the Indian began 
to be alarmed lest he should be crowded out. ‘Then 
the white man’s laws were very stringent; they were 


THE RED INDIAN AND THE PALE FACE. res 


hard for the whites, but they bore harder upon the 
Indian, because he was not used to.laws at all, and 
could not understand why the white people should in- 
Sist upon a great many things that meant nothing to 
the red man. ‘And then the white men did not un- 
derstand the red men any better than the red under- 
stood the whites. At that time people were much 
more afraid of what they could not see than of what 
they could ; it is always so, but 1t was much commoner 
then than now to believe in all manner of evil spirits. 
You study in your mythology of the crowds of spirits 
which the Greeks and Romans imagined to be living 
in woods and rivers and seas, and on hills and mount- 
ains. Well, the English had a mythology which was 
not quite so clear and well understood ; and when 
they saw the dark woods about them, and these dusky 
Indians coming and going, they were ready to believe 
that the Indians were not more than half men and 
women; so they thought often that they were doing 
right in getting rid of them.” 

‘‘ Boston never was attacked by Indians — was it, 
grandfather ?”’ 

“No. It could not have been easy for the most 
hostile Indians to get at the town. It was protected 
by water on all sides, and only the narrow neck 
connected it with the main-land. There they had a 
guard, and very soon after the settlement they built 
a barricade, and had a gate which was shut in the 
evening, after which no persons could come in. Then 


76 BOSTON TOWN. 


they forbade Indians carrying fire-arms, or even sticks, 
within the town. No, Boston was safe enough ; but 
it was more than once called upon to send men to 
the Indian wars. The solitary farm houses near Bos- 
ton had stockades about them, and the villages were 
guarded. I think the nearest 
that the Indians ever came to 
, Boston in their marauding was 
» when they attacked and burned 
= Medfield. In the war which was 

ek ox known as King Philip’s War, in 
1675, it is said that eight hundred and fifty men 
marched from Boston as part of the little army which 
defeated Philip.” 

“It must have been like some of our frontier life 
now, said the boys’ mother. 

‘* Very much like it in some things, and in this 
among others, that while there was all this enmity 
petween the white man and the red man, there were 
some white missionaries who were trying their best to 
bring the Indian out of his savage state, and the In- 
dians whom they had Christianized became the white 
man’s best friends in the terrible fighting which fol- 
lowed, whether in King Philip’s War or among the 
Sioux.” 

‘John Eliot was the best known of the mission- 
aries — was he not, father?” 

“Yes. John Eliot here, and Thomas Mayhew in 
Martha’s Vineyard. John Eliot was almost a Bos- 

















THE RED INDIAN AND THE PALE FACE. [7 


tonian. He was a minister in Roxbury, and _ lies 
buried there, but his fame is for his devotion to the 
Indians. He tells us how he went with three others 
to Newton to hold a meeting with the Indians, and 
tried to ‘screw, by a variety of means, something or 
other of God into them.’ He studied their language 
patiently, and preached to them, and translated the 
Bible into their tongue; but I really think that he 
taught them more about God by his own unceasing 
kindness toward them than he ever did by his ser- 
mons. ‘There is no argument so powerful as a man, 
and Ehot gave himself for the Indian. When the 
war came it was found that the praying Indians, as 
his converts were called, clung to the whites, and sep- 
arated themselves from their wild fellows. 

“ After Eliot began, there was a continuous effort 
to make Christians of the Indians, and the people 
who had the work in charge thought there was no 
surer way than to teach them out of the same books 
which they used for their own children. So the 
psalm books and catechisms and sermons which held 
what the Boston people thought to be the only true 
way of religion were translated into Indian and given 
to the red men. They built a college for them at 
Cambridge, so you see they were very much in ear- 
nest. It seems to us that they went to work without 
understanding the poor red men, and that they began 
at the wrong end with their teaching ; but they knew 
no other way, and I think it helps us to understand 


78 BOSTON TOWN. 


the men who laid the foundations of Boston, when we 
see how doggedly the best of them set to work with 
the Indians to make them into Puritans. It shows 
how entirely convinced they were that their way 
was the only true way.” 

“Talk a little Indian, grandfather,” said Benjy. 

“That ’s more than I can do,” said he, “ but I will 
read you one word,” and he put on his spectacles, 
took down a book, and read slowly and with great 
emphasis, — 


‘¢ ¢ Nuk-kit-te-a-mon-te-a-nit-te-a-on-ga-nun-no-nash.’ 


There, what does that mean, Benjy ?”’ 

‘“T should think, from the way you read it, it 
meant, ‘ Your money or your life.’ ” 

“Some kind of a vegetable,” suggested Jeff. 

‘“‘ Tt means ‘ our mercies.’ ” 

“ Well, I think it is one of Nuk and so forth that 
we don’t have to learn that word, and decline it at 
the Latin School. Why, it’s almost as long as the 
new building.” 



















































































































































































i 





7 





i 
H 
t 


/ 


TA 




































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































CHAPTER VI. 
THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 


One day about Thanksgiving time the children 
came home from Roxbury, where they had been with 
Jack Eliot, and they had much to tell of what they 
had seen, — more especially of the old Parting Stone 
in Eliot Square, a large stone which bears upon its 
face the words, “‘ The Parting Stone, 1744, P. Dud- 
ley,” and stands at the meeting of two ways which 
were the old roads to Dedham and to Cambridge. 

“There used to be several mile-stones in Rox- 
bury,” said grandfather, “and some are yet stand- 
ing, which were planted by Paul Dudley. He was a 
son of Joseph Dudley, a man bitterly hated in his 
time by many, yet who, from the time he was twen- 
ty-five till nearly seventy years old, was in some 
office or held some important trust. It was in his time 
that the Revolution occurred.” 

“ Why, I don’t understand that, grandfather,” said 
Jeff. “It says 1744 on the Parting Stone, and the 
stone was set up by Joseph Dudley’s son. How 
could Joseph Dudley have been living in 1776 ?” 


“Oh, we have n’t got as far as the American Rev- 
6 


82 BOSTON TOWN. 


olution, Jeff. It is the Boston Revolution that I 
mean. Did you ever hear of that?” 

FAN ORL, 

“Then I will tell you about it. You know the 
statue of Winthrop shows him with the Charter in his 
hand, and I have told you how much value the peo- 
ple set on the Charter. It was the king’s warrant 
for them to carry on the government and hold the 
land, and as long as they held this parchment they 
thought themselves able in Boston to elect their gov- 
ernor and other officers, and to manage things as 
they wished. They did not want to be governed by 
England, at such a distance, and they did not want 
men sent over to govern them who might not care 
for the things they cared for, and would very likely 
interfere with their churches and their ways. They 
had now for fifty years been governing themselves 
under the Charter. The Charter was a convenient 
paper. It was not very explicit, and the people used 
it in such a way that it should give them the largest 
possible liberty. All the while they called them- 
selves loyal servants of the King of England, and 
they helped him in his wars with the French, and 
sent timber for his ships, and made him presents, and 
did all they could to keep on good terms with him, 
so that they might be left to themselves. It was 
King Charles the First who was on the throne of 
England when Winthrop came over; but while Bos- 
ton was growing, changes were taking place at home. 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 83 


Charles was beheaded, and the Parliament had the 
power, with Oliver Cromwell at the head. Cromwell 
was Protector, and the New England men were his 
friends, though they were careful not to become too 
entangled in English affairs. But Boston men had 
had a good deal to do with bringing forward the Com- 
monwealth in England ; the success of the experiment 
over here had made Englishmen who were of their 
way of thinking more sanguine that England, too, 
could do without a king, and have a church without 
bishops; and when Charles II. came to the throne, 
his advisers, who did not like Puritans and Puritan 
ideas, began to urge the king to make himself more 
felt in America. ‘See that Boston,’ they said; ‘it 
is growing rich and independent. They make their 
own laws there, and coin money, and keep an army, 
and they will not let Church of England men have 
any rights. They are getting too independent, and 
you might as well have no authority at all there as 
to have the name only and not the real thing. They 
pretend that the Charter gives them ail their power. 
Then call back the Charter. It never was intended 
to give away a great and rich country.’ So the king 
began to be persuaded, and sent over to Boston for 
the Charter. This was just what the people did not 
wish to give up, so they made excuses, all the while 
protesting their loyalty to the king, sending him pres- 
ents, and trying by all means to evade his demand. 
It took a long while for letters and persons to cross 


84 BOSTON TOWN. 


the Atlantic. There was plenty to occupy the king, 
and he was finding it necessary to keep a strong army 
in England. He could not go to war with his own 
colony, which was constantly saying that the king was 
their great and glorious master. He went to law 
with them, and demanded the Charter through the 
courts; but year after year the magistrates in Mas- 
sachusetts succeeded in keeping the Charter without 
refusing the king’s order point blank. It became 
harder and harder, however, and there were parti- 
sans of the king in Boston who were making trouble 
between him and New. England. Probably some busy 
merchants, too, thought it was making much ado 
about nothing, and that if they were to give up the 
Charter they would still go on as they always had; 
that even if the king sent over governors, these 
could do no harm, and perhaps trade would be even 
better. 

“At length it became necessary to send over two 
men to London as commissioners to look after the 
interests of Massachusetts. One of these was Joseph 
Dudley, who had held high office, and was thought 
to be an able and honest man. ‘These commissioners, 
however, could not prevent the king and his advisers 
from having their way; and at length, without get- 
ting the actual Charter back into his hands, the king’s 
court declared that it was no longer in operation, 
that the colonies of New England were thenceforth 
to look directly to the king and the laws of Eng- 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 85 


land, and were to be governed as a piece of property 
belonging to the crown. The man who came back 
with this news, and brought a commission from the 
king, was Joseph Dudley, who had made friends in 
England, and had been appointed President of New 
England until a royal governor should be sent. The 
next year the governor came,— Sir Edmund An- 
dros, — and the colonies of New England became the 
Province of New England. 

“Tt was not merely a change of names. The Gen- 
eral Court, which had been elected by the people 
of the towns, ceased to exist when the Charter was 
taken away and Dudley was made President. ‘The 
whole authority was now centred in the king, and was 
delegated by him to the governor, who had a coun- 
cil appointed by the king to help him. The king’s 
name was felt everywhere ; courts were held, taxes 
laid, laws passed, all in the name of the king; and, 
what alarmed the people still more, the governor 
gave out that the titles to the land which the people 
held were good for nothing unless freshly granted 
by the king. It looked as if all the work which had 
been done for sixty years was to be swept away. 

“For a time everything seemed to be going on 
as Andros wished. The people murmured, and some, 
who objected, were thrown into prison ; but, on the 
whole, Boston appeared to submit to its loss of liberty. 
No one seemed to know just what to do, or how to 
take this new order of things. They saw the Church 


86 BOSTON TOWN. 


of England set up. Very few of the people then 
living in Boston had ever seen the Church of Eng- 
land, and there was a great deal of curiosity about 
it, for they knew that it was because Winthrop and 
their fathers thought this church in error, and grow- 
ing worse, that they had come over and settled Bos- 
ton. Then, besides being curious, they hated it, for 
they heard their ministers speak of it as something to 
be detested.” 

“Was King’s Chapel built then, father?” 

‘‘ Not at first, for the Church of England men used 
the Town Hall, and also the Old South, at an hour 
when the Old South people were not worshiping in 
it; but shortly after, when it was built, — not the 
one you now see, but a wooden building which stood 
on the same spot,-—the boys of the Latin School 
near by broke the windows and daubed the building. 
They heard their parents speak angrily of it, and boys 
are generally a little more fierce patriots than their 
fathers are. Things went on from bad to worse, and 
the chief men thought they saw Boston coming under 
the same oppression which their fathers and grand- 
fathers had known in England. They could not ap- 
peal to Parliament, for they had no rights there; they 
were subjects of the crown only. Andros meanwhile 
had been traveling through New England, and had 
brought all the colonies under his personal rule. It 
looked as if he had accomplished all that the enemies 
of New England across the water wished to be done, 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 87 


and he kept tightening his power. He forbade travy- 
eling merchants or peddlers; every one was to sell 
only in his own town. The liberty of the towns in 
choosing their officers was not taken away, but the 
officers were to act only under instructions from the 
governor, and-only one town-meeting was to be held 
each year. 

“ At length the people sent one of their ministers, 
Increase Mather, to England, to complain of the man- 
ner in which they were treated. It was with some 
difficulty that he got away, but he succeeded in es- 
caping, and once in London he tried, through all 
manner of influential people, to get a hearing for his 
oppressed countrymen. Andros, however, was grow- 
ing more powerful. The king had made him gov- 
ernor of all the English possessions in America, ex- 
cept Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, 
and he was moving about everywhere strengthening 
his position. All manner of rumors now began to 
get about. People in England were very uneasy. 
They told dark stories about the connection of James, 
who was now king of England, with France; and it 
began to be said in Boston that the king meant to 
sell all New England to the hated French, and that 
there were treacherous plans on foot for setting the 
Indians against the settlements. 

“You know a little of English history, and you 
know that in 1689 William of Orange, at the invi- 
tation of English patriots, came to England with an 


88 BOSTON TOWN. 


army, and King James fled without fighting, so that 
by a peaceful revolution the Stuart kings were set 
aside, and England was governed as it has been ever 
since by a Parliament which has the power, and a 
royal family which has the name. Well, rumors had 
been crossing the Atlantic as to what might happen 
in England, and the people who got the news were 
on tiptoe of expectation. In those days, you remem- 
ber, there were no newspapers crowded with news 
and telegraphic dispatches, but when a ship came into 
Boston harbor the captain and passengers brought 
letters and intelligence, some of which was quite old. 
While everybody was stirred by what was going on 
under Andros, a ship came in and dropped its anchor. 
It was the 4th of April, 1689. Among those on board 
was a young man named John Winslow, who belonged 
in Boston. He had been abroad, and was just com- 
ing back when the Declaration of the Prince of 
Orange, which he made upon landing in England, 
was published. He bought some copies, for he knew 
it would be good news to the people of Boston. He 
must have said something about the papers, perhaps 
showed them, for as soon as he was fairly at home 
the governor sent the sheriff for him. He went to 
the governor, who asked him why he had not come 
straight to him with the news. Winslow replied that 
he did not think it was his duty. Then the governor 
asked for the papers, and he would not give them. 
«You are a saucy fellow,’ said the governor, and 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 89 


sent him off with the sheriff to some justices of the 
peace, who also demanded the papers. Winslow re- 
fused to give them up, for he said they kept all the 
news from the people. Then the justices clapped him 
into prison. But the news had come, nevertheless, 
and for a fortnight the town was in a ferment. It 
was not yet known how William of Orange had been 
received, and many were cautious, fearing lest the 
movement should prove a failure, and that then those 
who had shared in it would fall under the heavy 
hand of King James. At length one Thursday, when 
the lecture would bring a good many people to town, 
— and, I suppose, more than usual, for public excite- 
ment brings people together easily, —it began to be 
whispered about that there were companies of men 
forming at either end of the town. Ever since early 
morning people had been astir, and it was known 
that Governor Andros had gone for safety to Fort 
Hill. The frigate Rose was in the harbor, but Cap- 
tain George, commanding it, was on shore. <A party 
of men suddenly appeared, and arrested him. Then 
about nine o'clock, the beat of a drum was heard, 
and on the beacon an ensign was run up. The drums 
continued to beat signals throughout the town, and 
those who were not in the secret were running hither 
and thither to see what was done. Parties of men 
armed went silently about to the houses of officers of 
the government, and soon the jail doors were opened 
and Andros’s friends were marched in behind the 


90 BOSTON TOWN. 


gates. Then those who were gathered at the Town 
House, at the head of State, then King Street, where 
the old State House now stands, saw a company march- 
ing up the street, led by Captain Hill, and escorting 
some grave citizens, who had been magistrates when 
the Charter was held, and had kept aloof from An- 
dros and his government. At the head of them was 
old Simon Bradstreet, eighty-seven years of age, and 
one of the few survivors of the company which had 
come over with Winthrop. They marched up the 
steps into the Town House and into the Council Cham- 
ber. The crowd gathered outside and stayed there 
till noon, when the gentlemen who had been in the 
Council Chamber appeared on the balcony looking 
down King Street, and one of them read aloud a pa- 
per which was called a 


DECLARATION OF THE GENTLEMEN, MERCHANTS, AND 
INHABITANTS OF BOSTON, AND THE COUNTRY 
ADJACENT. 


It was a statement of the wrongs they had suffered at 
the hands of Andros and ended thus;” and grandfa- 
ther went to the shelf, took down a book, and read : — 

“¢¢ We do therefore seize upon the persons of those 
few ill men, which have been (next to our sins) the 
grand authors of our miseries; resolving to secure 
them for what justice, orders from his Highness, with 
the English Parliament shall direct, lest, ere we are 
aware, we find (what we may fear being on all sides 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 9] 


in danger) ourselves to be by them given away to a 
foreign power, before such orders can reach unto us; 
for which orders we now humbly wait. In the mean 
time, firmly believing that we have endeavored 
nothing but what mere duty to God and our country 
calls for at our hands, we commit our enterprise unto 
the blessing of Him who hears the cry of the op- 
pressed; and advise all our neighbors, for whom we 
have thus ventured ourselves, to join with us in 
prayers, and all just actions, for the defense of the 
land.’ ” . 

“ You see,” grandfather went on, “it was a pretty 
bold thing for these Boston men to do. They had 
shut up the king’s officers in prison, and taken the 
government into their own hands, and it was not yet 
known whether or not William of Orange had got 
the power in England. The governor was in the 
fort, the old citizens were in the Town House, the 
frigate was in the harbor, where was also the castle, 
and armed men were pouring into Boston from the 
country about. It looked as if a fight was imminent. 
The governor sent a messenger from the fort to some 
of the chief citizens asking for a conference. They 
refused, and instead sent a demand to the governor 
to give up the fort, or they would attack it. The 
captain of the frigate was under guard, but the lieu- 
tenant on board got the vessel in fighting order and 
made ready to meet an attack. He sent a boat to 
bring off Andros, but as soon as the boat landed the 


92, BOSTON TOWN. 


crew were seized by the men who were carrying the 
demand to Andros, their arms taken from them, and 
the boat detained. It was now late in the afternoon. 
The governor wanted to parley, but his request was 
refused, and presently he came out from the fort, 
surrendered it, and was marched to the Town House 
with his companions. ‘These were placed in jail, and 
the governor sent under a guard to the house of Mr. 
Usher, one of the chief merchants in town, and living 
very likely where his father had lived close by the 
Town House. 

“They now had the governor in their power, and 
the next day, April 19, they made him sign an order 
for the surrender of the castle, and so down to the 
castle went the citizen soldiers and took possession. 
Then all the guns in the castle and fort, and in the 
shipping too in the harbor, were pointed toward the 
frigate, which was the only obstacle remaining. Cap- 
tain George begged not to be obliged to surrender 
his command, and the more cautious were reluctant 
to fire upon one of his majesty’s ships, which would 
have been a serious offense, so they came to a happy 
agreement. The sails of the frigate were brought on 
shore and kept carefully, so that the vessel could not 
possibly get away, and there the matter rested. 

“The Little Revolution had been accomplished, 
and the next thing was to have a new government 
in place of the one they had overthrown. The gov- 
ernor and his adherents were in prison; the governor 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 93 


indeed tried to escape, disguised in woman’s clothes, 
but he was brought back. Joseph Dudley, whom the 
people hated because they thought he had betrayed 
them, and whom Andros had made Chief Justice, was 
not in Boston at the time, but they found him, put 
him in his house in Roxbury, and set a guard over 
him, quite as much for his protection against the fury 
of the people as for any reason. So the men who 
had been most active formed themselves into a coun- 
cil for the safety of the people and conservation of 
the peace, and made old Simon Bradstreet president 
of it. Yet they did not dare do much. They had 
not been appointed by anybody but themselves, so 
they sent out to all the towns asking them each to 
send two delegates to a convention in Boston; Boston 
however was to have four. These delegates agreed 
in asking the magistrates, who were in office when 
the Charter was abrogated and Dudley had his com- 
mission, to resume the government under the old 
Charter, but they refused. Then they asked the 
council to continue to act as a committee for public 
safety until they could go back and get fresh instruc- 
tions from the towns. 

“‘ You see, boys, it was the towns that had always 
governed. The people met in their town-meetings, 
and chose some of their number to look after the 
local affairs of the town, and some to go up to Bos- 
ton and sit in the General Court, just as they do 
now, to manage, with the delegates from the various 


94 BOSTON TOWN. 


towns, the affairs of the whole colony. Andros had 
put a stop to that. He did not want the people to 
govern themselves in this way; he chose to govern 
them himself, and the moment Andros was shut up, 
all the towns were ready to go on again just as they 
had before. But the Charter had been declared by 
the courts of England no longer to exist, and to set 
up a new government under the old Charter was to 
act directly against the law. However, the towns 
again sent delegates to Boston, and out of fifty-four 
towns, all but fourteen voted to do just this thing ; 
and so when the convention met, after discussing the 
matter for two days, it was decided to ask the gov- 
ernor and the magistrates, who had been chosen at 
the last election under the old Charter, to form a Gen- 
eral Court, and resume government just as if nothing 
had happened during the past three or four years.” 

“ And did anybody stop them, grandfather ?” 

“No. The news came soon that William and Mary 
were King and Queen of England, and were to be so 
proclaimed by the old magistrates. Two Bostonians 
in London — Sir William Phipps and Increase Mather 
—had fortunately been on hand to prevent mis- 
chief, and they succeeded in stopping an order from 
the king that Sir Edmund Andros was to continue 
the government until further arrangements could be 
made.” 

‘And did we keep our Charter after all?” 

“No. The old Charter remained in force only till 


THE LITTLE REVOLUTION. 95 


a new one could be made, and that one differed from 
the first. There was to be a governor, but he as 
well as some other officers were to be appointed by 
the crown. There was to be a General Court chosen 
by the towns, but the laws which they made were to 
be approved by the king, and in other ways the colony 
was more directly under English rule. From 1630 
to 1689 the people had really governed themselves, 
and in that time they had learned how to do it. 
From this time till 1775 they were to be governed 
by England, for the benefit of England, but it was 
not possible for the people to forget self-government 
as long as there was a town-meeting and a town- 
church, each under the government of the people of 
the town. Andros had been gathering all the north- 
ern colonies under one government; under this new 
Charter a Province was constituted, which embraced 
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Maine, and Nova Scotia. 
A Bostonian who was a favorite in England was made 
the first governor.” | 

“So the Little Revolution was over,” said Benjy. 

‘‘ Yes. There was no blood shed that I know of, 
and it went on at the same time as the Great Rev- 
olution in England, and much in the same way. It 
was a real revolution though, and when everything 
was settled, Boston was nearer to London than it had 
been for some time. After this whatever took place 
in England was likely to affect Boston, and what went 
on in Boston was pretty sure to be heard of in Lon- 


96 BOSTON TOWN. 


don. It had been so before, when the early Puri- 
tans were on good terms with the Puritan leaders in 
England ; but now it was not so much in matters of 
church and religion and politics that the two were 
brought together, as it was in business and trade and 
the connection of families. Boston before had been 
the chief town of a little self-governing community 
of religious men. Now it was the principal commer- 
cial town of a flourishing English colony. English- 
men were sent over from London to govern it, and ~ 
governors who came from the court were quite as 
anxious to please the king as they were to make 
friends with the people whom they came to govern.” 


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BENET 





CHAPTER VII. 
BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 


Tuoucu they had lived all their young lives in 
Boston, the boys had never till now fairly visited the 
North End. They had been to the Boston and Maine 
Railroad station, and to the East Boston ferry, but 
the region lying between these points and stretching 
to the water side was a terra incognita to them. One 
day grandfather took them with him on a walk. He 
carried them first upon the outskirts of the district, 
leading them round the foot of Copp’s Hill. They 
walked by Causeway Street, past the railway sta- 
tions, and round by Commercial Street. When they 
came to Charles River Bridge, grandfather told them 
that once the hill on their right, which now they 
scarcely saw to be a hill, rose so sharply from the 
shore as to be climbed with great difficulty. 

“Tt was cut down,” he said, “a great many years 
ago, and used to fill in the land at its base and the 
beach, which was where this Commercial Street is 
now. They made a road here by the water, at the 
foot of the hill, and here were wharves and landing 
places. The whole high ground above us was called 
Mill Field, and there stood a windmill almost as soon 


100 BOSTON TOWN. 


as Boston was settled. The road was really a good 
deal higher then, I think, than it is now, and ran 
more along the slope of the hill at this point.” They 
had been walking quickly, when grandfather began 
to look about him, up and down, to stop and glance 
up at the houses. 

‘What are you looking for, grandfather?” asked 
Benjy. 

“Can either of you boys make out Henchman’s 
Lane ?”’ 

‘‘Why here is Henchman Street,” said Jeff, spy- 
ing the name on a lamp post. 

“To be sure, to be sure; it must be the same 
place. Now let me see,’ and the old gentleman, 
crossing to the foot of the street, looked over the 
way at the buildings. 

“This used to be a high bank here,” he went on, 
“falling off toward the water, and just at the foot of 
this street, not far from where we are standing, nearly 
fifty years ago, if | remember, —I was a young man 
then, — they were digging to lay the foundation of 
those houses opposite, when they came upon a brick 
arch, built under the hill, and they left it there, or 
a part of it, at any rate. I’ve not been here from 
that day to this, and I'd like to see if it’s here still.” 
He struck his cane on the pavement. 

“Doesn't it sound hollow, grandfather?” asked 
Benjy, cocking his head to one side. 

“Tut, tut, child; don’t make fun of your old 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 101 


grandfather. Come, we'll try that house there.” 
They crossed the street, and rapped at the door of 
a house. A young woman came through the entry 
and opened the door wide. 

“ Good-day,” said grandfather, putting on his most 
benevolent look, for he was not sure they would be 
welcome. ‘I’ve come with my grandchildren on a 
hunt for a curious relic that used to be in this neigh- 
borhood. When I was a young man, and _ these 
houses were built, I remember the workmen came 
upon a brick arch under ground, and I’m told it is 
still to be seen, leading out of a cellar. Did you 
ever see it in your house ?”’ 

“Well,” she said, “I did hear once something 
about it, but I never saw it. Come in, sir, and I'll 
speak to father.” So in they went, and followed 
their guide to a large room at the end of the house. 
There sat the mother over her child’s cradle, and the 
father by the cooking stove, eating a bit, while a 
canary and a mocking-bird and an Irish blackbird 
hung in cages and twittered. Grandfather and the 
boys stood in the middle of the room. 

“ There ’s a gentleman come to ask something about 
an old arch, father,” said the young woman. 

‘“T hope I’m not intruding,” said grandfather, po- 
litely, “but I take my grandchildren out to walk 
sometimes to see old Boston, and as I came by here 
I remembered an old brick archway or cave that was 
found about this spot some fifty years ago or so. Is 
there anything of the kind in your cellar?” 


102 BOSTON TOWN. 


“There ’s a sort of coal hole there,” said the man. 
“‘T’ve never used it; you can see it, if you want to.” 

“Thank you; if it’s no trouble, I should like to 
very much.” 

“No trouble at all,” and getting up the man lighted 
a lamp and led them to the cellar stairs. ‘ Have a 
care,” said he; “the passage is dark.” They stum- 
bled along behind him, and presently came to an un- 
derground room, lighted by cellar windows looking 
out on the street. In the corner was a great collec- 
tion of heavy blocks for hoisting hung upon stout 
sticks. ‘The man pulled them off one by one, and 
threw them into a heap on the cellar floor; then he 
drew aside some boards which rested against the outer 
wall, and they began to make out an opening. The 
boys grew very much excited. 

“T see a hole!” cried Jeff. 

“It’s the place, you may be sure,” said Benjy, 
and, as board after board was removed, the opening 
grew larger. The man went forward with his lamp, 
and the others, stooping, followed him through the 
square opening into an arched chamber, where they 
could not stand upright. It was about four feet from 
the ground to the top of the brick arch, and the floor 
measured about twelve feet by ten. At the further 
end was a solid stone wall, and the wall through which 
the opening was pierced was also of stone, being the 
foundation of the house. 

“This certainly is the place,” said grandfather. 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 103 


“ What do you suppose it was?” asked Jeff of the 
owner of the house. 

“Well, I never heard. I’ve thought of using it 
for coal, but I never put any in here.” 

‘“‘Here’s an iron pipe,” said Benjy, taking hold of 
one which ran across the top of the arch. “Isita 
water-pipe ?” 

“No, it’s an old pipe. The water-pipes are far- 
ther out and lower down. What do you think this 
cave was, sir?”’ he asked of grandfather. 

“There were a good many stories about it when 
it was first discovered at the cutting down of the 
hill,’ said grandfather. “ We only see a part of it. 
‘The opening was toward the water, and I suspect it 
ran in farther than this stone wall, but that when they 
came to lay the sewer they stoned it up. At first it 
was thought to be a smugeler’s cave.” 

“ Qh, jolly!” said Jeff. ‘And look here, grand- 
father ; just see this brick box.” The man who lived 
in the house went over to the side where Jeff had 
found what he called his brick box. He felt about it 
but could find no opening. It was like a brick col- 
umn projecting above the earth about fifteen inches. 

‘“‘] must pry this open some time,” said he. 

“ Perhaps the smugglers buried some money in it,” 
said Jeff. 

‘“‘Doubloons,” said Benjy; “they always buried 
doubloons.”’ | 

“ But it was not a smuggler’s cave,’ said grand- 


104 BOSTON TOWN. 


father. “It was proved to be a store chamber built 
by one Captain Gruchy in the wars with the French. 
He was probably a privateer, and stowed away here 
the goods which he captured from the enemy. Gruchy 
owned this side of the hill, and built a wharf below 
here by sinking two vessels which he had captured. 
But they must have rotted away long ago.” 

“Any way,” said Jeff, “it’s just the place for 
smugglers.” 

“ Yes,” said grandfather, as they crawled out of 
the opening into the cellar again; “ and it was very 
likely used for purposes something like it. It is said 
there were other caves built like this, where people 
used to hide goods to keep them out of the custom- 
house officers’ way during the time when Andros was 
governor. Randolph was the first customs officer, 
and he was Andros’s right hand man. He was a 
pretty zealous officer, and the Boston people hated 
him.” They went up stairs again, and dusted each 
other carefully, for they were pretty well covered 
with cobwebs. 

‘“ Well, did you find it?” asked the good-natured 
mother, who was still by the cradle. 

“Yes, indeed, and a queer place it is. We are 
very much obliged to you,’ turning to the man, 
‘for showing it to us.” 

“ Not at all, | have n’t been there myself for a good 
many years, and I’ve lived here for twenty years.” 

“You didn’t know that you had a historical mu- 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 105 


seum here, did you?” said grandfather good-nat- 
uredly. 

‘“ No, I might set up a show.” 

“Only dig into that brick box,” said Jeff, as they 
went away ; “Ishould n’t wonder at all if it was full 
of — full’ of ” — 

“Oh, say diamonds,” said Benjy. “ We might as 
well, as long as we don’t know anything about it.” 

“ People always want to pick up riches,” said 
grandfather, as they walked up Henchman Street, 
“but it generally happens that for one person who 
makes a lucky hit, there are ninety-nine who waste 
their time hunting, and might have got their riches 
by good, honest industry. Now there was Daniel 
Henchman, from whom this street was named. He 
was a Boston man, and in his younger days was an 
assistant master at your Latin School. He was a 
captain in the militia, and in King Philip’s war took 
a company of Boston soldiers out of town. He was 
a good citizen, and attended to his work. I don’t 
believe he ever hunted for treasure, but here on 
Charter Street, at the corner of Salem Street, was 
where Sir William Phips lived, and he was a great 
treasure-hunter; and though he came to be govy- 
ernor of Massachusetts, he is remembered best by 
how he found some treasure, and how he lost Quebec. 
We will walk home now, and I[’ll tell you about him 
on the way.” 

‘How came Phips to be Sir William, grandfather, 
if he was born in America?” 


A 


106 BOSTON TOWN. 


“America was part of the British Empire then, 
Benjy, and the king could make a knight of a Bos- 
ton man if he chose. Phips was not born in Boston. 
He was born in Maine, on the Kennebec, at what was 
then a frontier settlement, and grew up there poor 
and ignorant, for his mother and father are said to 
have had twenty-six children, and living there in the 
wilderness I don’t think there was much chance for 
the boy to grow either rich or learned. But he was 
ambitious, and not meaning to stay in the backwoods 
learned the trade of ship-carpentry, and that brought 
him to Boston while he was still a young man. He 
married a widow with money, and learned to read 
and write indifferently well. At that time there were 
a great many pirates and rovers on the seas, and all 
sorts of stories were told about the West Indies. 
Boston vessels carried on a trade with that part of 
the country, and I suppose that the islands and Span- 
ish Main seemed to those accustomed to bleak New 
England very rich and prosperous. Then the Span- 
iards were still thought of as the owners of gold and 
silver mines in Mexico and South America, and Span- 
ish ships were supposed to be laden with treasures. 
The pirates always made for these ships as best worth 
capturing. The sailors and ship-carpenters told won- 
derful stories, and Phips heard of a Spanish vessel 
which had been wrecked off the Bahamas. He was 
owner and master of a small craft, and he made a 
voyage to find it. Sure enough there was the wreck, 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 107 


and he managed to pick a few things up, though not 
enough to pay for the trouble. But he heard of 
“another and more important galleon which had been 
sunk near Port de la Plata, more than fifty years 
before. 

“So he went home with his head full of this 
sunken treasure. People were as eager then to get 
rich fast in this way as nowadays they are to find a 
silver or gold mine. He had not enough money, how- 
ever, to enable him to fit out an expedition, and he 
went to England to see if he could get the English 
government to send him out. I do not believe he 
said much about his plans in Boston, and if he did 
he was laughed at; but strange to say he did succeed 
in persuading the king to put him in command of 
the Rose-Algier, a ship carrying eighteen guns and 
ninety-five men. Some people think that this enter- 
prising and uneducated ship-carpenter went directly 
to the king, and told him such stories in his blunt 
way as made him think Phips really would bring 
back vast treasures; and then everybody, from the 
king down, had faith in the stories of fabulous wealth 
brought away from Mexico by the Spaniards. 

‘Phips did not get the treasure, but he showed 
himself a man of real grit, and his adventures on this 
voyage are worth telling, for they help to explain 
how such aman in atime when book learning was 
even more esteemed than now in New England 
should have come to be governor. The crew who 


108 BOSTON TOWN. 


had shipped on the Rose-Algier were easily obtained, 
for they were as eager to pick up money from the 
bottom of the ocean as Phips was, but they were a 
wild set, and not the kind to bear disappointment 
with patience. So when they failed to find the place, 
after fishing about, they demanded that the ship 
should become a piratical craft and they should be led 
against the Spanish vessels that were cruising in those 
waters. Phips refused, and an open mutiny broke 
out which he put down courageously. But the crew 
erew more and more determined to have their own 
way, and at length an opportunity came which they 
nearly secured. The ship was out of repair, and in 
order to get at her copper bottom, Phips took her to 
a small and uninhabited island, and anchoring her in 
a cove, moved on to the island a great part of her 
stores, and disposed of the rest so that she should 
careen over. He stretched a bridge across from the 
ship to a rocky projection of the island, and made an 
encampment near by, covering the stores. The crew 
got permission to go off into the interior of the island 
and all except seven or eight, who stayed with Phips 
and were at work with him, went into the woods 
out of sight and hearing. There they held a con- 
sultation and determined to go back to the ship at 
night-fall, seize Phips and the others on the vessel, 
bind them, leave them on the island, and putting the 
stores back to set sail as pirates. In talking it over, 
however, they found they should need with them a 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 109 


certain carpenter who was then at work on the ship ; 
so they sent for him on some pretense, told him what 
they intended, and threatened to kill him instantly if 
he would not jo them. He begged for leave first 
to go back to the ship and get his tools, and they let 
him go, but sent two or three to keep watch and see 
that he did not betray them. After he had been on 
board the vessel a little while he pretended to be 
taken suddenly sick and went to the cabin to get 
some medicine. There he had for a single moment 
a chance to tell Phips of the plot. The captain bade 
him go back and join the crew as if nothing had hap- 
pened, and back went the carpenter with the other 
seamen to shore. 

‘There only remained two hours before the muti- 
neers were to strike, and Phips made instant prepara- 
tions to meet them. He found the half dozen with 
him ready to stand by him. There were a few of 
the ship’s guns which had been removed to the island 
to protect the stores in case the island. had been 
inhabited. There was not time to get these aboard, 
and if they had attempted it, they would surely have 
shown what they were about, but as men were going 
back and forth across the little bridge, it was not 
difficult to withdraw the charges from the guns, and 
to bring back all the ammunition from the island. 
Then Phips loaded all the guns on the ship, and 
trained them to cover the encampment, drew the 
bridge in, and was now ready for the mutineers. As 


110 ’ BOSTON TOWN. 


soon as they came within hearing he called out to 
them that he should fire upon them if they went near 
the stores, and made them stay at a distance. Then 
he put out his bridge again and set two or three of 
his faithful men at work bringing off to the ship the 
stores that were on the island, and told the mutineers 
that he was going to do to them just what they had 
determined to do to him; he was going to leave them 
on the island to starve. That brought them to their 
senses, and they began to beg to be taken back. 
They declared they had nothing against him except 
that he would not turn pirate with them, and prom- 
ised to obey him, if he would take them back again. 
So he made them give up all their arms, and by 
keeping watch over them, he managed to get to 
Jamaica without further danger, and there he dis- 
charged the disaffected crew and took on another.” 

‘“ But did n’t he find the treasure ?”’ 

‘He did not know exactly where to look for it, 
Jeff; that was the trouble, and he tried to find some 
one who could guide him to the spot. At length he 
came upon an old Spaniard at the island of Hayti, 
who showed him the very reef where the wreck had 
been sunk. But look as hard as he could Phips could 
make out nothing; and as the Rose-Algier was still 
out of repair and not thoroughly manned, he was 
obliged to go back to England without the treasure. 

‘You would have thought that that would be the 
end, but it was not. Captain Phips had shown him- 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 11] 


self so brave a man, and besides had become so pos- 
itive that he now knew the exact spot where to dive 
for his treasure, that while the government would 
not give him another vessel, he was able to persuade 
the Duke of Albemarle and a few other gentlemen 
to help him form another expedition. He knew bet- 
ter what he wanted in the way of equipment, and 
now thoroughly prepared, off he set for Port de la 
Plata again. Here he anchored his ship in the har- 
bor, and prepared for the search. He could not get 
near enough to the reef with the ship, so he built a 
stout boat, and went to work himself with his adze as 
in the old days when he was only a ship-carpenter. 
Then he had, besides, a small vessel, and he sent 
this vessel and boat out, placing on board some men 
whom he could trust, and also some Indians who were 
used to diving for sponges or for treasures. Phips 
himself remained with the ship. 

“When the men came to the reef they put out in 
their boat, and were able to come close to it. It was 
under water, but close to the surface in places. Then 
again it would fall off suddenly and in a very steep 
fashion. ‘The water was so clear and still that they 
could see very distinctly. The divers plunged down, 
too, but brought back nothing. The men leaned 
over the side of the boat, and peered down through 
the transparent water. They knew that if they 
found the treasure a part would belong to them. But 
they could make out nothing, and were just going to 


112 BOSTON TOWN. 


give up the search, when one of the men spied a 
curious piece of sea-weed in the crevice of a rock. 
He sent down a diver to bring it up, and when the 
diver came back, he declared that he had found some 
cannon lying close by it. Immediately the men were 
in the water, for they were sure they had found now 
the sunken ship. Down they went, and when they 
appeared again, one of the divers had brought up a 
great mass of silver. They marked the spot with a 
buoy, put back to the tender, and made all haste to 
report to Phips. 

‘He would not believe their story at first, he had 
so often been disappointed ; but when they showed 
him the silver, he cried, ‘Thanks be to God, we are 
all made;’ and no time was lost in getting to work. 
Everybody was ready to do his best, and in a few 
days they had fished up treasure to the value of 
three hundred thousand pounds; part was in coin, 
part in uncoined gold and silver, and part in precious 
stones. ‘The coins were in bags, which had lain there 
at the bottom of the ocean for fifty years, and were 
covered with shells and lime so thickly that they 
had to break into them with iron tools; but as soon > 
as they had made a breach, out poured the gold 
coin. The men were full of excitement, and one 
poor fellow, a ship-master who happened to be in 
those waters, and was invited by Phips to join him, 
actually went mad over his good fortune, so it was 
not such very good fortune after all. They had not 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 113 


finished their work when their provisions gave ‘out, 
and even gold and silver would be of no use to them 
if they had no food.” 

“Don’t you remember,” broke in Benjy eagerly, 
‘‘how Robinson Crusoe found some gold and silver 
on his wreck, and said, ‘O drug! what art thou good 
tot 

“Yes,” said Jeff dryly; “and how, upon second 
thoughts, he took it away.” Grandfather laughed. 

‘Robinson was a wise man. Gold and silver are 
not to be despised, though they will do nothing for 
a man unless there is somebody else to take them in 
exchange ; and Phips and his men found the gold and 
silver very useful when they went into port again. 
They tried to keep the matter secret, so that they 
might go back and get some more, but Adderley, the 
poor fellow who went mad afterward, and whom they 
left there, was not careful to keep the secret; it 
leaked out, others went there from the neighborhood, 
and Phips never got any more. He had a good cargo 
of gold and silver, however, and with this he set 
sail for England. Here he was received warmly by 
the Duke of Albemarle and his friends, to whom most 
of the treasure belonged, because they had been at 
the expense of getting it. Phips himself got but six- 
teen thousand pounds in all, but that was a fortune 
tor him, and then the Duke of Albemarle made a 
present to Mrs. Phips of a gold cup worth a thousand 


pounds more, and moreover King James knighted the 
8 


114 BOSTON TOWN. 


captain, and he was now Sir William Phips, and a 
very famous man indeed. 

‘‘ His riches and his title did not make him at once 
a wise or a very cultivated person. He could write 
little better than when he first began to learn a few 
years before, and he was a rough-spoken, hot-headed 
ship-carpenter and sailor. Yet he loved New Eng- 
land and Boston, and he refused to stay in England 
where King James wanted him, but went back to 
Boston. For a time he was a man of singular conse- 
quence, since he was befriended by King James, and 
at the same time he was a friend of Boston, so that 
he had it in his power to help Boston just when the 
town needed it, for he came back only a little while 
before the Little Revolution, of which I have told 
you, broke out. But he was not fitted to get along 
very well with people, and back he went to England, 
where he arrived just after James had fled, and Wil- 
liam and Mary were on the throne. James, you 
know, had not given up his claims to the throne of 
England, and he still had many adherents. He tried 
to persuade Sir William Phips to go back to Boston, 
and be governor under him; but Phips knew Boston 
better than that, and, instead of casting in his for- 
tunes with James, he stayed in London and did all 
he could to help New England get the Charter she 
so much wanted. 

‘ T will not try to follow the ship-carpenter through 
his life. He came back to Boston, and headed an ex- 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 115 


pedition to Nova Scotia, which captured Port Royal, 
and that is the reason why, when a new province of 
New England was made, Nova Scotia was included. 
Boston was highly elated that her little naval expe- 
dition should have been so successful, and nothing 
would do but they must drive the French out of the 
country altogether, and so a most foolhardy attempt 
was made, under Sir William Phips, to take Quebec, 
the strongest fortified place on the continent. The 
expedition had a most dismal failure, but Phips, when 
he came home, did all he could to make up the losses 
which were caused by it. He was a restless man, 
and he had great schemes for taking Canada by other 
means, and went over to England to persuade the 
king to it; but King William was too busy with other 
matters. However, he liked this bluff sailor, and 
finally, when the new Charter was given to New 
England, he sent over Sir William Phips as the first 
governor under it. The new governor had had so 
much to do with getting the Charter, with Increase 
Mather, a notable Boston minister, that the town 
changed the name of Green Lane, where Phips lived, 
to Charter Street, and by that name it has gone ever 
since. 

“He was governor only a little over two years 
and got himself into a good deal of trouble, for he 
was a quick-tempered man, and though he had much 
shrewdness and resolution he was ignorant and made 
a good many mistakes. He died finally in 1695, only 


116 BOSTON TOWN. 


forty-four years old, and when he was dead people 
forgot his mistakes and remembered chery) his gen- 
erosity and honesty.” 

‘Grandfather, what became of his wife’s gold 
cup?” asked Benjy. 

“1 don’t know that I ever heard.” 

‘“¢ Perhaps it is buried in the brick box,” suggested 
Jeff. “The land there belonged to Phips, did n’t 
it?” 

“ Yes, it was part of his place, and Captain Gruchy 
bought his house with the land down to the water’s 
edge, and lived there.” 

‘Well, 1 mean to believe it,’ said Jeff. “It’s 
there, you may be sure. Don’t you believe some of 
Captain Kidd’s money is buried somewhere, grandfa- 
ther?” 

‘“‘T have no doubt a good deal of Captain Kidd’s 
money got well taken care of. He lived, you know, 
when Phips was living.” 

“Why, I did not know that.” 

“Oh yes, and what is very interesting, the Earl of 
Bellomont, who succeeded Sir William Phips as govy- 
ernor of New England, made a contract with Captain 
Kidd to put down piracy.” 

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Jeff. 

“It does look like it; but it is really very difficult 
to say just who the thieves were at this time. The 
seas were full of rovers who fell upon merchant ships, 
as highway robbers took purses on the roads, and just 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 117 


as some of the highway robbers appeared to be inno- 
cent farmers when they were not robbing people, so 
the pirates sometimes appeared to be trading vessels. 
Then, too, there was no such navy in the English 
service at home or abroad as could keep order on the 
high seas, and there were long lines of coast without 
towns and not very well known, where the pirates 
could hide. It was as if a man was going through a 
piece of dark woods when he was sailing a vessel to 
the Gulf of Mexico ; a robber might jump out of the 
bushes suddenly, and a pirate might dart out from 
behind an island or projecting cape. Besides all this, 
wars were breaking out every little while in Europe, 
and when that happened any one was thought to do 
a good thing who fitted out a vessel to catch and 
plunder one of the enemy’s ships, and it was very 
easy when the war was over for privateers to keep 
on catching and plundering, and that was what these 
pirates did. 

‘‘ Now Boston was a commercial town, and it was 
by its ships and trade that it was growing rich. The 
merchants could not have pirates catching their ships, 
and what made them very angry was that they were 
pretty sure that some of their neighbors were quietly 
fitting out pirate ships and sending them off atter 
their vessels. Everything of this kind was of course 
kept very secret, so that it is not possible now to 
know exactly what was done, but we know that they 
passed severe laws against piracy, and when they 


118 BOSTON TOWN. 


eaught a pirate they hung him. You know Nix’s 
Mate in the harbor ?” 

“Oh yes,” said the boys. 

“ Well, the Boston people had a gibbet there on 
that lonely place; common pirates who had been 

-_ hung they buried there in the 
—= sand, but the captain and ring- 
leaders they hung up in irons 
i, from the gibbet, so that when 
naee Sailors came into port, they 
could see the skeleton and take 
warning.” 

“ But tell us about Captain Kidd,” said Jeff. 

“Captain Kidd was a New York man, and Lord 
Bellomont, with a number of other people, furnished 
money to fit out an expedition to catch pirates, with 
Kidd to take charge of it. Just as the Duke of Al- 
bemarle had supplied Captain Phips with a vessel to 
fish up treasure from the sunken wreck, so Lord 
Bellomont employed Kidd, and all who were inter- 
ested in the venture were to divide between them- 
selves all the profits, giving the king a tenth part, for 
they would hang the pirates and divide the pirates’ 
booty.” 

“ But I should think the people whom the pirates 
plundered ought to have their goods back again,” 
said Benjy. 

“T am afraid they would not get much. The earl 
and those who paid for Captain Kidd’s services would 














































































Nix's Mate. 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 119 


claim all he captured, and not trouble themselves to 
hunt up the unfortunate owners. But it did not prove 
to be very profitable business, certainly not to Cap- 
tain Kidd, who was finally hung, nor to the Earl of 
Bellomont, who was always obliged to defend himself 
against evil charges. Kidd sailed away to the Kast 
Indies, and after a while rumors came that, instead 
of capturing pirates, he had turned pirate himself. 
There was one ship in particular, called the Quedah 
Merchant, which he was said to have taken, and, as 
the owners were not at war with England, they de- 
manded the arrest of Kidd, and the English govern- 
ment sent out orders to all the colonies to have him 
arrested when he should appear. By and by he was 
heard of on the coast. Then he was found distrib- 
uting treasure along the shores of Long Island Sound, 
and at length he established himself at Gardiner’s 
Island, and sent word to Bellomont where he was, 
and that if he might have a safe conduct to Boston, 
he would come on and prove his innocence. He had 
captured the Quedah Merchant, to be sure, and had 
her safe in acreek by the island of Hayti, but he 
would explain all that when he came to Boston. 

‘* Bellomont was a partner of Kidd the pirate- 
catcher, but he was a royal governor, and it would 
hardly do to make terms with Kidd the pirate. He 
laid Kidd’s proposition before his council, and by 
their advice wrote to Kidd telling him he might 
come to Boston, where he would be fitted out to go 


120 BOSTON TOWN. 


after the Quedah, and nobody should harm him or 
touch his treasure until orders should come from Eng- 
land, always provided he was telling the truth. So 
Kidd came to Boston, and with him came Mr. Liv- 
ingstone, who also was interested in the venture. 
The captain was bidden bring in a full narrative 
of his adventures, which he had said would prove 
his innocence; lists of his men, both those who were 
faithful and those who he said had deserted him be- 
cause he would not turn pirate; and a full account 
also of the treasure which he had brought, and that 
which he had left aboard the Quedah. He was to 
have it ready the next day by five o’clock. He came 
at the time appointed, but excused himself as he had 
not yet had time to make up his accounts. So an- 
other day was given him, and he did not appear ; he 
was sent for, but when he came he made a fresh ex- 
cuse. Then, when he left, the governor showed the 
council letters which he had received from England, 
ordering the arrest of Kidd and seizure of his goods. 
It isimpossible to say whether these orders had really 
just come or had been held back by the governor 
until he had taken alarm. At any rate, Kidd was 
arrested. He had been threatening, through Living- 
stone, not to give up the Quedah until Bellomont had 
surrendered a bond for ten thousand pounds, which 
Kidd had given him. Now he began to beg the 
governor to let him go back to Hayti, under guard 
as a prisoner, and bring off the ship with its rich 


BOSTON PIRATES AND TREASURE-HUNTERS. 121 


cargo. It looks a little like a bribe, and I rather 
think that Bellomont’s refusal indicates that he was 
ready to act honorably. Kidd did not go after it, 
and nobody knows what became of the Quedah. Its 
mysterious disappearance gave rise to a great many 
of the stories which have sprung up of the burying 
of Kidd’s treasures. Twenty years later another 
pirate named Bellamy was wrecked off the coast of 
Cape Cod. His ship, which was broken to pieces, 
was called the Whidah, and, though the two words 
are spelled differently, Whidah is pronounced some- 
what as Quedah would be by the Spaniards, and it is 
not impossible that it was Kidd’s ship put to piratical 
uses.” 

“ But, grandfather, where had it been for twenty 
years ?”’ 

“Oh, I don’t know; but it is not at all likely that 
it had been staying in that Hayti creek. Possibly 
the men left behind had got tired of waiting for Kidd, 
and had gone off on their own account, but had for 
a time kept their movements secret. It would be 
like such a pirate as Bellamy, if he came into pos- 
session of the Quedah, to keep the name as a boast.” 

“ And what became of Kidd?” 

“ He was taken finally to England, tried for mur- 
der and piracy, and hung on the former charge. 
Some of the Boston men were very unwilling to have 
him taken away for trial; they did not like the prin- 
ciple ; they thought that offenses against law in Amer- 


122 | BOSTON TOWN. 


ica should be tried in America. But they were over- 
ruled. Captain Kidd was not the last of the pirates, 
but the mystery about the Quedah, and the confu- 
sion about his connection with men high in author- 
ity, have made him one of the most famous.” 

‘‘T suppose your father never saw Captain Kidd, 
grandfather ? ” 

‘‘No, my boy, nor my grandfather, but my great- 
grandfather might easily have seen him, for he was 
twenty-seven years old when Kidd was in Boston.” 

‘¢ And he was” — 

‘“‘ Atavus, Jeff, atavus.”’ 

‘“ Next comes abavus, grandfather. Why, we’re 
getting down among your relations.” 

« Aye, Jeff, I can just remember abavus, my grand- 
father. He was born in 1717,-and was ninety-five 
when he died.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 
THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 


Ir happened that grandfather had a plaster cast 
which needed repairing, and so he had an errand one 
day to Garey’s, in Province-House Court. The boys 
went with him, going down Montgomery Place and 
by the stone steps which led to Province Street, and 
so by that narrow passage to the court where were 
various small shops, — gold-beaters and shoemakers 
and tailors. They had often been there, and it was 
no new thing for them to go into Mr. Garey’s shop, 
and ring the bell by opening the door. They liked 
to walk about among the white plaster images, to 
see the swarthy foreigners at work, and to apply their 
small classical knowledge to the various statues and 
busts which they found there. They knew the way. 
also by the little covered passage into Washington 
Street, and they had read Hawthorne’s stories, so 
they knew what the old Province House was. 

“ T never thought before,” said Jeff, as they walked 
home that day, “ how near the Province House must 
have been to everything. Why, it was quite in the 
centre of the town.” 

“ Yes, for a long time it was very near the geo- 


124 BOSTON TOWN. 


graphical centre, about half way between the fortifi- 
cation on the Neck and Copp’s Hill. It was almost 
directly opposite the Old South, and the house in 
which Governor Winthrop lived and died. It was 
but a little way from the Town Hall and from the 
dock and the wharves, and all about it were the 
houses of the rich Boston merchants.” 

‘‘Was the court where Garey’s is the place where 
the house stood ?”’ asked Benjy. 

“No, that was I suppose part of the garden and 
open space which used to be about the house. When 
the house was built it had a lawn in front reaching 
to Washington Street, with oak-trees, and a gateway 
upon the street, while two porters’ lodges were at 
either end of the fence. In the early part of this 
century, the lawn was built over by a block of stores, 
shutting out the front view, and it was then very 
likely that the buildings on the side where Mr. Ga- 
rey’s shop is were put up, leaving the court only 
to give access at the side, and behind the block of 
stores on Washington Street. The building itself was 
changed from time to time until 1864, when it was 
burned, and now all that remains is a portion of the 
brick walls.” 

‘“T don’t think I know why it was called Province 
House,” said Benjy. 

‘Why, just as we say State House now,” said Jeff. 
‘The Province House is where the laws were made 
when Massachusetts was a Province.” 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 125 


“You are nearly right, Jeff. Massachusetts was 
first a colony ; then, when the old Charter was taken 
away and a new one given, it was part of the Province 


of New England ; then, All along, the town of 
when the Revolution e Boston was the chief 
followed, it becamethe | town of the Colony, then 
State of Massachusetts. g of the Province, and 




















































































































The Old Province House 


finally of the State. The Boston town business was 
transacted at first in the meeting-house, then in the 
Town House, where the Old State House stands. 
When the old Town House was burned, in 1711, 
another of brick was built which lasted till 1747, when 
the present building was built and continued to be 


126 BOSTON TOWN. 


called the Town House. It was here that the meetings 
of the legislature were held, when Massachusetts was 
a Colony, when she was part of the Province, and 
after she became a State. Then it began to be called 
the State House, and got the name Old State House 
when the new one on Beacon Hill was built. But the 
Province House was the residence of the governor, 
and while the legislature did not meet there and pass 
laws, there was a good deal of business transacted in 
it by the governor and his council. It was bought 
by the province for the governor’s residence in 1716. 
It was built by Peter Sergeant, a Boston merchant, in 
1679. Peter married the widow of Sir William Phips. 
He was a rich man, and he built a house as other rich 
men did, with a great deal of costly wood-work and 
tapestry hangings. On the first floor was a great 
reception room, where the governor stood in full 
court-dress and received his guests. A broad flight 
of stone steps led up to the front door, and over it 
was a portico from which proclamations were read. 
There was a cupola at the top, from which one could 
look out over the country, and far away to sea. 
Perched up on top of the cupola was a copper Indian 
with glass eyes, and a bow and arrow all ready to 
shoot. If he had shot anything, it would always have 
been against the wind, for the Indian was a weather- 
cock. Behind, where Province Street now is, were 
the stables attached to the place.” 

‘¢] wish our governor had a house in Boston which 
belonged to the State,” said Jeff. 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 12% 


“There was some talk before the Old Hancock 
House on Beacon Hill was taken down of buying 
that for a governor’s residence, but it was not done. 
People are more indifferent now than they once were 
to the style in which a governor or any other person 
of authority lives. In the days when the Province 
House was occupied by royal governors, there was a 
great distinction kept up between the governor and 
those about him, and the common people of Boston. 
You see the governor was a representative of the king 
of England ; he governed here in his stead, and the 
king of England lived in a palace and had many ser- 
vants who were very respectful toward him. Kings 
had not then, so much as now, come to intrust the 
‘government of their kingdoms to the people them- 
selves meeting in Parliament, and the people had less 
opportunity for bettering themselves than they now 
have, so that the distance between the king and people 
was wider than it is to-day; the king was higher up 
and the people lower down. In Boston the difference 
between the governor and the common people was 
not so great as it was in England between the king 
and the peasantry, because a hundred years of self- 
government had given self-respect and dignity to the 
people ; they had discussed public affairs in town- 
meeting, and one and another, by industry and wit, 
had gained fortune and power. Still there was a 
difference, and it was shown in the various ways that 
people like to use for making it seem that they are of 


128 BOSTON TOWN. 


more consequence than their neighbors. The goy- 
ernor dressed as a gentleman, who could wear the 
finest clothes without being in danger of soiling them. 
The dress of gentlemen was in marked contrast to 
that of workmen. It is only of late years that people 
have saved their best clothes to wear at evening par- 
ties or on state occasions. You don’t see a gentleman 
nowadays walking about the streets in the morning 
in a dress coat and white necktie; but if you had 
lived in provincial Boston, you would have seen the 
governor and the people of leisure dressed in the 
most elaborate fashion. There was a famous Boston 
painter who was living here not far from our house; 
his name was John Singleton Copley, and he painted 
a good many portraits of the rich men of the Prov- 
ince. I have a photograph of one of them which I 
will show you, for it is the portrait of a governor, 
and you can see how it looked.” 

They had reached the house by this time, and 
after tea grandfather got out a portfolio, and showed 
them the photograph of which he had spoken. 

“The photograph has no color, so it does not look 
as rich as it might, but you can make out something 
of how the painting looks. He wears a powdered 
wig, you see, and his hair is créped at the ears. His 
coat is of dark blue, and lined with white satin. See 
how large the sleeves are, and they have very deep 
cuffs. The waistcoat is of white satin. The picture 
only gives the upper part. If we could see his legs 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 129 


we should probably find them incased in silk stock- 
ings, and silver buckles on the shoes.” 

_ “What a long time it must have taken him to 
dress!” said Jeff. 

“To be sure. That was an important part of the 
day’s duty; but then dress made up some of his dig- 
nity and position, and he had no daily newspaper to 
read. When he went out to walk he buckled on a 
sword, and put a cocked hat on his head. But he 
more often went in his coach or on horseback, with a 
negro attendant.” 

‘‘ And were all the royal governors lords and so 
forth ?”’ asked Benjy. 

“Oh no; they were generally of English families 
in favor with the king, and they often engaged in 
business in Boston, taking ventures in ships, just as 
we saw the Karl of Bellomont in partnership with 
Captain Kidd. Boston was a busy town, and its busi- 
ness was chiefly in building and sending out ships. 
Why, Bellomont said in 1698 that there were more 
good vessels belonging to the town of Boston than to 
all Scotland and Ireland. ‘The vessels sailed to the 
West Indies and to England and back. They car- 
ried out beef and pork, fish, lumber, and whale oil ; 
and brought back rice, pitch, spices, logwood, rum, 
and sugar from the West Indies, and all manner of 
luxuries from England,— most of the cloth that 
men and women wore, except the very coarse goods 


which were spun here. Have n’t you sometimes 
9 


130 BOSTON TOWN. 


seen signs over stores reading, ‘W. I. Goods and 
Groceries ?’”’ 

“Why, of course,” said both the boys. ‘“ We call 
them Wild Indian goods.” 

‘“‘ Well, I suppose that is the way signs read a hun- 
dred and fifty years ago, for then all those spices 
and the sugar and rice which now we get largely from 
the South, came from the West Indies, especially from 
the English settlements there, and were classed to- 
gether under the name West India goods. All along 
the edge of the town were ship-yards where ships 
were built, and there were a number of rope-walks 
where rope was spun. The merchants grew rich and 
built large and spacious houses for themselves, but 
these houses were not in great blocks as you see them 
now. They were sometimes of wood, sometimes of 
brick, and rarely of stone, and had great gardens 
about them. You can see such places still at Salem, 
and indeed I suppose some of the streets there now, 
like Chestnut, for instance, look very much as Boston 
streets must have looked a hundred and fifty years 
ago. You are too young, but your mother remem- 
bers very well how Summer Street used to look be- 
fore stores were built there, and what large trees 
stood all about that part of town.” 

‘Like those in Essex Street, grandfather ? ” 

“Yes, very much like those. The houses on Pur- 
chase Street, and along the water, had cupolas to give 
long views across the harbor, and there were sum- 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. lead 


mer-houses in the gardens. ‘There was a famous 
place called the Gardiner Greene place, where Pem- 
berton Square is now, but the hill was higher then, 
and the garden sloped down to Tremont Row. Then, 
along the Common, on the eastern side of Tremont 
Street, near Winter, were other large houses with 
gardens.” 

‘¢ But where were the shops, grandfather ? ”’ 

“They were along Washington Street and up Corn- 
hill. Many of the shopkeepers lived above their 
shops. The old store, at the corner of Washington 
and School streets, shows you how the buildings 
looked then, and I suppose this was one of the 
larger and better sort. The business centred about 
the Town Hall and Market Place, and down King 
Street, or State Street, as it is now called, to the 
water, and about the Town Dock, where Dock Square 
is. The merchants used to walk about at noon near 
the Town House, to transact their business with each 
other; and they said they were on ’Change, that is, 
walking in the Exchange, for in London merchants 
walked in the Royal Exchange, and Boston merchants 
liked to have the same names as those used in Lon- 
don. You can see a reminiscence of it in Exchange 
Alley and Exchange Street and Exchange Place. 
There were coffee-houses, too, just as in London, 
and here they met to hear the news, and the stages 
used to start from them. It is not a long while since 
Young’s Hotel was known as Young’s Coftee House. 


ow BOSTON TOWN. 


You see vessels were constantly coming and going 
between London and Boston, and people were pass- 
ing between the two places, and the Boston people 
followed the London fashion whenever they could.” 

‘Did they have any Common ?”’ 

“To be sure they did. As far back as Winthrop’s 
time the Common, with very much the same bound- 
aries as at present, was reserved for the use of the 
town forever, and it is the one part of Boston which 
has changed least. ‘The land lies now very much as 
then. There are the same little hills, but of course 
the paths differ, and the growth of trees and grass 
is richer. For a long time people pastured their 
cows there. My father did with others. People 
used to get stones from it to make their cellar walls 
with. You must not think of it in the early days 
as the trimly kept place which it now is. Wild roses 
grew on the hill-sides; there were marshes and wet 
places, and only two or three trees, for it was a bar- 
ren and rocky pasture. The first trees were planted 
about 1725, along Tremont Street Mall, as far as 
West Street. That was called the Great Mall, and 
people used to walk there for amusement at sundown. 
The Frog Pond was there, but not walled in, and two 
other small, low ponds, which have since been filled 
in. Where the Soldiers’ Monument now is stood a 
flag-staff, and the place was called Flag-staff Hill. It 
was not till the beginning of this century, and within 
my recollection, that the trees were set out which 


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THE PROVINCE HOUSE. P35 


border the Beacon Street Mall. The water came up 
in the Back Bay near to where Charles Street now 
runs, and there was a boat-house there when I was 
‘a boy. In the last century there were rope-walks 
perched on piles in the marshy tract where the Pub- 
lic Garden is. Opposite Joy Street, on the Beacon 
Street Mall, was a Wishing Stone, and the young 
people used to walk round it nine times, and then 
stand on it or sit down on it and wish their wishes, 
but they were not to tell their wishes, else they would 
not come true, just as it is with your wish-bone.” 

“T wonder,” said Jeff, “if the boys had base-ball 
on the parade ground, and if they had training 
there ?”’ 

“I’ve no doubt they played ball on the Common, 
and coasted down the hills in winter, just as they 
rambled over it for berries in the summer time, but 
base-ball had not been invented then. They had a 
parade ground, however, not where the present is, 
for that was a marshy tract filled in by leveling Fox 
Hill, which stood-about half way between Beacon 
and Boylston streets: no, the parade ground lay, 
I think, between Tremont Street and the Old Elm. 
The Old Elm was in all probability standing there 
then. Do you remember it, Benjy ?” 

“I can just remember when it was blown down in 
a great gale, grandfather.” 

‘“‘ Yes, that was in 1876, and now there is a shoot 
of the old tree growing within the little inclosure 


136 BOSTON TOWN. 


where the old tree stood. If it lives and grows to 
be over two hundred years old, the young people in 
those days will tell stories about the tree from which 
it sprang, and how their grandfathers, farther back 
than they can easily count, found it on Boston Com- 
mon. ‘The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Com- 








































































































The Old Elm. 





pany used to come out under the tree and parade 
and drill, and fire at a mark. Judge Sewall was 
captain at one time, and he tells us he made such 
poor shots that he fined himself by buying a silver 
cup and giving it to the best shot.” 

‘“‘T suppose they were getting ready for the Rev- 
olutionary War,” said Jeff. 

“Yes, though they did not know it, and though 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. TOL 


the men whom Judge Sewall marched up and down 
would all be dead before that came: their children 
and grandchildren were to fight in that war, but the 
. colony and the province were to have much practice 
in fighting before the Revolution. In the colonial 
times they were in dread of the Indians, and you 
remember I told you that Daniel Henchman led a 
Boston company out in King Philip’s war; but after 
the colonial days, when Massachusetts was part of the 
province, and Boston was the capital, when governors 
sent over from England were ruling in the Province 
House, there were wars with the French. The Ene- 
lish and French for a long, long time were hardly 
ever at peace with each other; and since both Eng- 
land and France had colonies in America, the Eng- 
lishmen and Frenchmen on this side of the water 
kept up the quarrel which was going on in Europe. 
In Europe, indeed, only a narrow channel separated 
the two countries, and here between the French in 
Canada and the English in Maine a wilderness inter- 
vened, with only a_ few solitary settlements here and 
there ; but, for all that, a deadly conflict was going on 
between the two nations, and whenever a peace was 
made in Europe something was done about the pos- 
sessions in America, a piece given to the victorious 
country, or a fort which had been taken was given 
back. Whenever there was war the people in Boston, 
who had ships and fishing smacks out, were in fear 
lest these should be captured by French privateers ; 


138 BOSTON TOWN. 


and they thought it would be a fine thing to send a 
fleet and an army to take the French possessions in 
the North. Besides, the French made friends with 
the Indians more easily than the English did, and so 
when there was war, the Indians helped the French, 
and that embittered the English still more. 

‘Now the governor in Province House was gov- 
ernor over all the province, and so when there was 
war between France and England, he was the one on 
this side of the water who made the arrangements 
for such fighting as was done here, and if he was a 
military man, as he was more than once, he would 
find life in Boston rather dull, and would care most 
to be fitting out fleets and sending out little armies 
to the north and east where the French were estab- 
lished. The Boston men thought it would be a fine 
thing if they could capture the forts and hold the 
harbors there. Then they could fish without fear, 
and they could show the people in Great Britain that 
they were Englishmen, too, who were zealous for the 
English name. 

“'There were five notable excursions made by Bos- 
ton men against the French, and I will tell you 
briefly what they were. The Boston merchants had 
been greatly annoyed by French cruisers which ran 
out from a little fortified harbor in Nova Scotia, or 
Acadia as it was then called, and an expedition was 
fitted out from Boston in 1690 against this harbor of 
Port Royal. It was placed under the command of 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 139 


Sir William Phips, who sailed with seven vessels, 
manned by two hundred and eighty-five men, and 
carrying from four to five hundred militia-men. They 
found no cruisers in the harbor, and the fort was de- 
fended by about seventy soldiers only, and unpre- 
pared for standing an attack or a siege, so the com- 
mander surrendered, and was carried off to Boston. 
Phips easily got control of the other settlements, but 
‘he made no provision for a permanent government, 
and after he was gone the French slipped back again. 
He and his men plundered Port Royal, and robbed 
the poor commander of pretty much everything he 
had. 

“The expedition was so successful that Boston was 
very vain of the performance, and readily believed 
that her men had been very valiant and could take 
not only a little place like Port Royal, but a strong 
citadel like Quebec. There had already been talk ot 
such an expedition, in connection with one by land 
from Albany against Montreal ; and now, upon Phips’s 
return, the Boston men set about collecting a fleet 
and army. They applied to England for aid, and, 
not waiting for her answer, they went on with their 
preparations. England refused, but Massachusetts 
thought herself quite equal to the task, and it was 
believed, besides, that enough booty would be brought 
back from Quebec to pay the expenses of the vent- 
ure. A good many merchants advanced money on 
the strength of this expectation, and after vessels 


140 BOSTON TOWN. 


and men had been pressed into the service, on the 
9th of August, 1690, the fleet sailed from Nantasket 
with twenty-two hundred men and provisions for four 
months. If it had been meant only to make a sum- 
mer trip this might have answered, but they carried 
only a small amount of ammunition, and they had no 
pilot to take them up the St. Lawrence. It was a 
most foolhardy expedition, and yet it turns out that 
if it had been under the lead of a true soldier, act- 
ing with promptness, it might have been successful, 
not by attacking Quebec in front, but by passing up 
the river and climbing the heights behind the town, 
where 1f was more exposed.” 

“ Why, that is what Wolf did,” said Jeff. 

“Yes; and Phips might have done the same. In- 
stead of that he delayed and delayed, and, finally, 
when the French had had full opportunity to collect 
troops and pertect their defenses, he appeared in the 
bay below the frowning walls of the citadel, and sent 
a messenger with a demand for surrender. The goy- 
ernor of Canada was an old French officer, Count 
Frontenac, who had the messenger blindfolded, so 
that he might learn nothing of the interior of the 
fortress, and then brought into the council chamber, 
where he sat with his officers about him, all in splen- 
did uniforms. When the bandage was removed, and 
the messenger looked about him, he must have been 
very much astonished at the sight of these brilliant- 
ly dressed soldiers, and quite prepared to tell Sir Wil- 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 14] 


liam Phips, when he went back, how contemptuously 
Frontenac treated the demand for surrender. Phips 
made plans of attack, and kept up a furious bom- 
barding against the mighty rock. His guns made a 
great din, but did very little damage. His men were 
sick, the little expeditions which they made all failed, 
and at length he collected his little disabled fleet, and 
sailed away back to Boston, covered with disgrace. 
If he had only known it, and had held out a little 
longer, it is said that a famine within the town would 
have compelled Frontenac to surrender; but I do 
not believe he would have done this without making 
some effort to drive away the besiegers. The French 
were glad enough, however, to see Phips and _ his 
fleet sail away, and were only fearful lest they should 
fall in with and capture some vessels laden with sup- 
plies which were on their way from France ; but no 
such good fortune attended the Boston men. 

“The failure had one good effect upon Boston. 
It made the town begin to think that it was not 
very secure itself, and within the next few years a 
ereat deal of pains was taken to strengthen the de- 
fenses of the harbor, and a number of ships were 
moored in line of battle to annoy the enemy in case 
of attack. But their courage returned, and they de- 
termined to take Port Royal again, —a nest of hor- 
nets, as they called it. They sent out two expedi- 
tions, which resulted in nothing, but in 1710 they 
sent a strong fleet, which besieged the place, cap- 


142 BOSTON TOWN. 


tured it, and changed its name to Annapolis, in honor 
of Queen Anne, who was then reigning over Eng- 
land. 

“The greatest and most memorable expedition, 
however, was that of 1745 against Louisburg. Gov- 
ernor Shirley sat in the Province House, and was one 
of the ablest of the governors whom England had 
sent over. There was war between France and Eng- 
land, and New England men were fired with zeal to 
do some famous thing. There was more military 
wisdom now than when Phips sailed against Quebec, 
and the most careful preparations were made, for the 
fortifications of Louisburg were said to be very strong, 
and to have cost five millions of dollars. The expe- 
dition seemed almost as hopeless as Phips’s, but it 
was planned and executed with greater care. For 
six weeks the siege went on. An English fleet as- 
sisted in the blockade, and at length, with scarcely 
any fighting, the garrison surrendered, and the im- 
mense fortress with all its stores came into the hands 
of the New England men. There are two mementos 
of the siege here. Louisburg Square was named in 
honor of it, and over the entrance to the college 
library, at Cambridge, you may see a cross which was 
brought away from the chapel at Louisburg. It was 
a great event, and I suppose nothing in the military 
way had so much to do with giving New England 
men confidence when the Revolutionary war opened 
as this triumphant expedition to Louisburg.” 


THE PROVINCE HOUSE. 143 


“But the English gave the fort back to the 
French, grandfather,” said Jeft, who knew some his- 
tory. 

“ Yes, three years later, when the treaty of peace 
was made between the English and French, Louis- 
burg was réstored, and some believe that it was part 
of the policy of England to keep the colonies here 
in check, for there had already begun to be signs of 
discontent, and the people were growing so strong 
that the English government was not sure what they 
might not attempt. Louisburg was taken again in 
the next French and English war, when Quebec also 
was taken, and Montreal, and all Canada passed into 
the hands of the English.” 

“Grandfather,” said Benjy, when the old gentle- 
man seemed to have finished, “ you said there were 
five expeditions that sailed out of Boston harbor 
against the French in Canada. I have kept count, 
and there were only four,—the capture of Port 
Royal in 1690, Sir William Phips’s expedition against 
Quebec the same year, the second capture of Port 
Royal, when the name was changed to Annapolis in 
1710, and the taking of Louisburg in 1745.” 

“Did I say five? The fifth is not one which I 
like to tell, and, besides, you know a good deal about 
it now. It was the expedition under Winslow in 
1755, which reduced the forts in Acadia, and brought 
away the French Acadians and scattered them through 
the country. You know the story in Longfellow’s 
‘Evangeline. About two hundred families were 


144 BOSTON TOWN. 


brought to Massachusetts, but not many remained in 
Boston. They were sent inland to the country towns, 
for besides that they were chiefly farmers, the peo- 
ple had a fear lest they would slip away by water 
and get back to Acadia. ‘There was an uneasy feel- 
ing in many minds, and I am sure that conscience 
was at work upbraiding the people for their cruelty. 
I should not like to have been Governor Shirley 
meeting Colonel Winslow when he came back to the 
Province House to report how he had obeyed orders, 
nor Colonel Winslow himself, who shows in his jour- 
nai that he hated the business he had undertaken.” 

‘Governor Shirley was not the last governor in 
the Province House, was he, grandfather ?”’ 

“No. The last was Governor Gage, and he gave 
it up to Sir William Howe, who occupied it during 
the siege of 1775-6. The Province House was a 
busy place then, for it was military headquarters. 
Opposite were some stables next to the Old South, 
and the Old South itself was used, you know, for a 
riding-school. So we can fancy the orderlies’ horses 
fastened by the gate-posts in front of the house, 
guards pacing back and forth, and red-coated soldiers 
passing along the stone flagging and up the flight of 
steps.” 

‘“ Well,” said Benjy, “ I wish the Province House 
was there yet; I’d like to see it; and then I should 
find it easier to imagine all these fine things.” 

“Tt has gone like the rule of England which it rep- 
resented,” said grandfather. 


CHAPTER IX. 
A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 


ONE evening, early in December, Jeff and Benjy 
were hunting for a game which they had mislaid, and 
looked in a. secretary which stood in the library. 
In turning over the contents of a drawer they came 
upon a little leather case which they did not remem- 
ber to have seen before, and opening it they found to 
their surprise an old silver medal. They spelled out 
the words on it. 

“Why, grandfather !”’ they exclaimed, speaking to 
the old gentleman, who was reading his newspaper, 
‘‘ here is a Franklin medal, and it is dated 1814.” 

“To be sure: that is my medal. I had that when 
I left the Latin School.” 

“Why, did you have Franklin medals then? I 
knew the boys had them now, but I didn’t know you 
had one.” 

“Why not, Jeff? Whom are the medals named 
from ?” 

“ Franklin, I suppose.” 

‘¢ And who was Franklin 2?” 


“ Why, Benjamin — Benjamin Franklin.” 
10 


146 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Yes, and I suppose you knew he was a Boston 
boy ?”’ 

“* Was he the first boy to have a medal ?”’ 

“Oh no, he left in his will the money which is spent 


in buying the 
medals. Here, 
I will read you 
what he says 
in his will ;” 
and grand- 
father went to 
a book-case and 
took down a 
volume: “a 
was born in 
Boston, New 
England, and 
owe my first 
instructions in 
literature to 
ae the free gram- 
mar schools es- 
tablished there. 
I therefore give 





one hundred’ 


pounds sterling to my executors, to be by them, the 
survivors or survivor of them, paid over to the man- 
agers or directors of the free schools in my native 
town of Boston, to be by them, or by those persons or 


ae fi 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 147 


person who shall have the superintendence or man- 
agement of the said schools, put out to interest, and 
so continued at interest forever, which interest annu- 
ally shall be laid out in silver medals, and given as 
honorary rewards annually by the directors of the 
said free schools belonging to the said town, in such 
manner as to the discretion of the selectmen of the 
said town shall seem meet.’ ” 

‘Who are the selectmen of Boston, grandfather ?” 

“There are no selectmen now, Benjy, but when 
Franklin died Boston was a town and the government 
of the town was administered by ten citizens, who 
were chosen or selected out of the whole body in 
town-meeting each year, and so called selectmen. 
The towns all about us are governed so still. Now 
that Boston is a city, the people choose a Mayor and 
Board of Aldermen and Common Councilmen, and 
these take the place of selectmen, and the Franklin 
Fund remains and is held in trust by the city gov- 
ernment.” 

“J thought Franklin lived in Philadelphia,” said 
Jeff. 

“He did live there much of his life, and died 
there, but he was a Boston boy. I’m afraid you 
never stopped to read the inscriptions at the base of 
the statue in front of City Hall.” 

“Why, yes, I’ve seen the statue plenty of times, 
and I have read the inscriptions, but I don’t remem- 
ber them.” | 


148 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘Then go there to-morrow, read them, look at the 
little bas-reliefs in bronze let in to the pedestal, and 
tell me about it when you come home, and see, too, 
if you can find where Franklin was born. But stay, 
T will tell you what to do. Walk down Milk Street, 
and look up at the Boston Post building, and see what 
you can find, and then go down to the corner of Han- 
over and Union streets. Walk down Hanover as far 
as Marshall Street, look carefully on both sides of the 
way, and then examine Marshall and Creek streets. 
To-morrow evening I shall want to hear your report, 
and then I’ll tell you more about Franklin.” 

The boys left their grandfather to his paper, but 
the next day after school, they went on what they 
called a Franklin pilgrimage. They went from Bed- 
ford to Franklin Street, from a notion that they 
might find some reminder of Franklin there. They 
had fallen into the way of noticing the names of 
streets and wondering why they were so named, and 
as they passed through Arch Street, they looked 
in vain for any arch across it. They went through 
Hawley Street to Milk, and, crossing over, stood 
looking up at the Boston Post building. 

‘ Well, I don’t see anything,” said Benjy, looking 
up as high as he could. 

‘Nor I,” said Jeff, who was staring at the windows 
in the first story. They continued to look, and 
people who passed seeing two boys watching the 
building began to stop and look too, till a little crowd 
had gathered. 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 149 


‘* Well, I never,” said Jeff presently. ‘ There it 
is, Benjy, in the second story: see, Birthplace of 
Franklin, and there ’s his bust.” The two boys had 
not noticed the gathering about them till now. when 
Jeff touched Benjy’s sleeve and drew him quietly 
away. When they were at the head of the street, 
they looked back. ‘There was the crowd still stand- 
ing and starmg. Nobody knew what his neighbor 
was looking at, and one after another dropped off, 
much mystified. 

“What geese!” said Benjy, and walked off with 
his brother up School Street. They read the in- 
scriptions and looked steadily at the bronze medal- 
lions. 

‘“‘ Now, Benjy,” said Jeff, ‘* we must remember just 
how these stand, for grandfather will be sure to ask 
us.” It took them some little time to commit the 
statue to memory, but then they went on their way 
and stood for some time on the four corners of Union 
and Hanover streets, and strolled about among the 
neighboring streets, but look as hard as they might 
at all the corners, they could find nothing which had 
anything to do with Franklin. They made their re- 
port in the evening to their grandfather. 

‘We went first to Franklin Street,” said Jeff. 

“Yes, and we went through Arch Street,” said 
Benjy,“ but I did not see any arch.” 

“You would have seen one a few years ago, 
Benjy. Franklin Street used to be one of the pleas- 


150 BOSTON TOWN. 


antest streets in Boston to live in. It was laid out 
a little after the death of Franklin, and named after 
him. All the lower part, that is from Federal Street 





































































































































































































































































































































































































Franklin Street, just before the Fire. 


up to about Hawley, was a low, muddy place. A 
great distillery stood near Devonshire Street, and the 
land between Milk and Summer Streets was pasture 


A BOSTON BOY. OFTHE LAST CENTURY. indi 


land. A Boston merchant first drained a part of the 
bog, and made a fish-pond there ; then afterwards a 
company of gentlemen made the ground more solid, 
and built a handsome block of dwelling-houses on 
the south side of the street above and below Arch 
Street ; where that is, they threw an arch across be- 
tween two of the houses, and built chambers over 
the arch, so that one could drive beneath and come 
out in the fields near Summer Street. The Histor- 
ical Society, and the Boston Library now in Boylston 
Place, used to have rooms over the arch. Then, 
on the opposite side of the street, were other houses 
with flights of stone steps and iron railings. I 
think the shape of the street is much the same 
now as then, a graceful curve, but in the middle of 
the broadest part was a grass-plot, inclosed with an 
iron fence, and in it stood an urn to the memory of 
Franklin. There were beautiful elm-trees in the 
street, and a great flag-staff stood in the grass plot. 
It is all changed now, and was changed, indeed, be- 
fore the great fire. I was really sorry to see those 
generous brick houses taken down.” 

“¢ So was I,” said the boys’ mother, who was in the 
room. ‘I was sorry, too, for I was born in a house 
at the corner of Franklin and Hawley Streets. We 
moved from it when I was four years old, and my 
very earliest recollection is of dragging a sled down 
its steps when we moved away.” 

“ And did you find Franklin’s birthplace ?” asked 
grandfather. 


152 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Oh yes; he was born where the Boston Post 
building stands.” 
“ Yes, he was born there in a little wooden house ; 
I can just remember it, for it was burned down in 
1810,— in this month, too, just seventy years ago. 
It stood end on to the street. The front was clap- 
boarded, and the upper stories projected over the 
lower, so that, I suppose, 
SSS the rain and snow might 
be carried off from the 
house more surely. The 
door was on the west side 
looking up toward Wash- 
ington Street. I believe 
it looked out on stables, 
nn Hh but lam not sure. There 
|, were only two rooms on 
the ground-floor; the 
front one was about 
twenty feet square, and 
eS Pune ree here the family ate their 
meals, and sat round the great fire-place; the kitchen 
was behind, and there were one or two chambers up- 
stairs. Here lived Josiah Franklin, the father of Ben- 
jamin. He came over from England in 1685, when 
people were beginning to be very discontented with 
King James, and he was one of those who sought 
New England that they might have greater freedom. 
He was a dyer in his own country, but there was not 






























































A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 153 


much opportunity for this business in Boston, so he 
became a tallow-chandler and made candles, a very 
useful occupation then, when all plain people used 
them for light. There were seventeen children in 
the family.” . 

“Seventeen children, grandfather!” exclaimed 
Jeff. ‘“ How in the world did they ever crowd into 
that little house ?” 

“That puzzles me, too, Jeff, but I think that per- 
haps the older children were apprentices and lived 
with their masters. At any rate, Josiah Franklin 
moved away from Milk Street when Benjamin was 
six years old, possibly because the house was too 
small, and went to live at the corner of Union and 
Hanover streets.” 

“ Oh, that is where we went,” said Benjy ; “ but 
there was no house there. I thought, perhaps, you 
sent us there to see where Franklin printed.” 

“No, that was elsewhere. ‘The house where they 
lived is gone. Indeed, it could not be there, for the 
place where it stood was in Union Street ; the street 
was widened, and the house thus had to be pulled 
down. I wanted you to go there, however, for an- 
other reason. Did you go by Dock Square ?” 

“ Yes, sir.’ 

“Well, then, you saw how little distance it was 
from what used to be the Town Dock. You know 
T told you that the water used to come up to North 
Street, and the wharves and ship-yards were off that 


154 BOSTON TOWN. 


street. When the Franklins moved, therefore, they 
were close by the water-side, and they were just as 
near, too, to the Mill Pond, for they had only to go 
a few steps on the other side, and they came to a 
bog where Haymarket Square is, and the bog was 
the muddy shore of the Mill Pond. Benjamin was 
sent to the Latin School at first, im hopes that he 
might go to college, but his parents were poor, and 
decided it could not be done, so they took him away 
and sent him to what was called a writing school. 
When he was ten years old his father took him from 
that school and set him to work at his own trade 
of making candles and soap. He had to cut the wick 
for the candles, fill the molds, wait upon customers 
at the shop, and run errands. He did not like the 
work at all, and wanted rather to be a sailor, for they 
were so near the wharves and the ships that all the 
busy life there seemed a great deal more attractive 
to the boy. He learned how to manage a boat, and 
to swim and dive, and he was very handy at every- 
thing which he undertook which required ingenuity 
and skill. - I will read you what he tells about him- 
self at this time,” and grandfather took down Frank- 
lin’s “Autobiography,” and read : — 

“<«There was a salt marsh that bounded part of 
the Mill Pond, on the edge of which, at high water, 
we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much 
trampling, we had made it a mere quagmire. My 
proposal was to build a wharf there fit for us to stand 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 155 


upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of 
stones, which were intended for a new house near 
the marsh, and which would very well suit our pur- 
pose. Accordingly in the evening, when the work- 
men were gone; I assembled a number of my play- 
fellows, and working with them diligently like so 
many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, we 
brought them all away, and built our little wharf. 
Inquiry was made after the removers; we were dis- 
covered and complained off; several of us were cor- 
rected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the 
usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that noth- 
ing was useful which was not honest.’ 

‘¢ Franklin’s father was a very sensible man, and 
when he found after two years that his boy was 
more and more dissatisfied with making soap and 
candles, he began to look about for something else 
for him to do. He used to take him on walks about 
town, and show him the different trades-people at 
work in their shops. You know in those days there 
were no machines working by steam, and no great 
factories. The only power besides a man’s hand was 
horse-power, or water-power, or wind-power, and the 
carpenters did not buy their doors and windows made 
for them, but used their tools upon every part of the 
house. Even their clapboards and shingles were 
often roughly hewn, though they had saw-mills in the 
country which were run by water. So Franklin would 
see men busy at all kinds of work, — joiners, brick- 


156 BOSTON TOWN. 


layers, turners, braziers, shoemakers, wheelwrights, 
thatchers, ship-carpenters, cutlers, and printers, — 
and everywhere that he went he saw boys, some 
younger than himself, bound out or apprenticed to 
masters, so that they might learn the trade and work 
at it themselves. Benjamin Franklin liked all this; 
he was clever with tools himself, and was always con- 
triving ingenious little machines at home. Finally his 
father decided that he would have him learn the cut- 
ler’s trade; and as Benjamin’s cousin, Samuel Frank- 
lin, who had learned the art in London, had just 
established himself in Boston, it was proposed that 
Benjamin should be apprenticed to him, but first he 
was sent to make a trial of it. Samuel Franklin, how- 
ever, wanted a fee for teaching the boy, and although 
apprentices sometimes paid a fee, the father for some 
reason was displeased, and took Ben home again. 
‘All this time Benjamin Franklin showed a great 
liking for reading, and, while he had few books and 
few opportunities to borrow or buy, he made the 
most of what he had, and, seeing this taste, his fa- 
ther determined to have him taught the printer’s 
trade. Mr. Josiah Franklin already had a son in the 
business, who had just come home from England, and 
he was very anxious to apprentice Benjamin to him, 
for he was afraid that the boy, with his hankering 
after the sea, would run away. So the papers were 
signed, and Benjamin Franklin was bound to his 
brother James for nine years. He was twelve years 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 157 


old, and from that time until he was twenty-one, his 
brother was to take care of him, feed him, clothe 
him, and teach him his trade, tor that is what the 
master was bound to do for the apprentice. At first, 
of course, the boy would be an expense, and cost his 
master a good deal, but as he grew older the work 
which he did, and for which he received no wages, 
would begin to be valuable; and it was supposed that 
by the time a boy was twenty-one and had learned 
his trade, he would have paid back to his master all 
that had been expended on him, and more, too, so 
that it was customary, and included often in the pa- 
pers, to pay an apprentice when he obtained his free- 
dom, at twenty-one, a suit of clothes, which was 
called a freedom suit, and a hundred dollars. Per- 
haps it was because Benjamin was so promising a boy 
that his father required James to pay him wages 
during the last year of the apprenticeship. I wish it 
were more the custom to have apprentices now.” 

“ Why, grandfather ?” 

“ Because I think “it is good for a boy to be bound 
fast to some honest occupation, to learn it thoroughly, 
and to look forward to the period when he shall be 
free; and because I think it is good for masters in a 
trade to be bound to take care of and to teach boys 
who are to learn. But these things are not so easily 
to be done now. ‘Tell me, Jeff, what you saw on the 
pedestal of the Franklin statue facing School Street?” 

‘‘ That is the front,” said Jeff, “ for Franklin is look- 
ing in that direction, and the inscription is, — 


158 BOSTON TOWN. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
Born in Boston, 17 January, 1706. 
Died in Philadelphia, 17 April, 1790.’’ 


“That is right. And what is the bas-relief above?” 

“It is two boys printing.” 

“Yes,” broke in Benjy; “and we saw the very 
printing-press in the procession on the 17th.” 

“To be sure; and which of the two boys do you 
think is Franklin ?”’ 

“T think it is the one by the press, with the copy 
in his hand.” 

“No,” said Jeff, “I think it’s the other, — the 
one by the case correcting a page. Is n’t it, grand- 
father?” 

“My vote must be for Benjy. I don’t know why 
Mr. Greenough made Franklin reading copy, as we 
say, unless to show that when he was a printer’s ap- 
prentice he was already able to do the higher work. 
Before his time was out with his brother he had be- 
come a diligent reader, and had even begun to write 
for a newspaper which his brother published. To 
publish a newspaper in those days was a somewhat 
doubtful business ; for though the old papers had not 
a great deal of reading in them, they were begin- 
ning to be the means which people used for making 
their complaints known, and those in Boston who did 
not think the government was treating the town fair- 
ly said so in the newspaper, and, as nobody signed 


AP BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY, «0 159 


his name, the government held the printer of the 
newspaper accountable. James Franklin was clapped 
into prison once because something offensive ap- 
peared in his paper, and he would not tell who 
wrote it. While he was confined Benjamin took 
charge of it, and was quite willing to print sharp 
words. When James was released it was on condi- 
tion that he should no longer print his paper, and 
‘thus, to get round the difficulty, his name was taken 
off, and Benjamin’s put on; but for this it was nec- 
essary that his apprenticeship should cease. The 
two brothers did not agree with one another very 
well, and it was not long now before Benjamin left 
his brother and went to New York, and thence to 
Philadelphia, in search of work. That is the last of 
Benjamin Franklin as a Boston boy, for though he 
came back more than once to visit the town, he never 
returned to live here.” | 

“Where did he fly his kite, grandfather ? 

“ How did you know he had a kite ?” 

‘Why, on the opposite side of the pedestal is a 
bas-relief of a man and a boy flying a kite.” 

“ And what is the inscription underneath ?”’ 

“You tell, Jeff; I can’t remember.” 

“ Kripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis,” said 
Jeff, promptly. 

“ And what’s that in English ?” 

“<Hripuit, he snatched; ‘fulmen,’ the thunder- 
bolt ” — 


Pl] 


160 BOSTON TOWN. 


* Oh, give it straight off in good English, Jeff.” 

“Well,” said the boy, stopping to collect his 
thoughts, “‘ he snatched the bolt from heaven and the 
sceptre from tyrants.” 

“That is pretty well. Snatched sounds a little 
rude. Children snatch things, and I would call celo 
the sky and not heaven. However, you seem to 
have the idea, and what does it mean? ”’ 

“T am sure I don’t know, unless he invented light- 
ning rods.” 

“You know the story of Franklin’s kite, don’t 
you?”’ 

“No, sir.” 

“Oh, I must tell you that then, though I supposed 
of course you knew it. What do boys learn at 
school? We all learned about Franklin’s kite. By 
the way, which of the figures in the bas-relief do you 
think is Franklin, the man or the boy ?” 

‘1 think the man looks most like him.” 

“Quite right, and the boy looks a little like the 
man, for he is Franklin’s son, William Franklin, who 
was about twenty-two years old at this time, and 
afterward became Governor of New Jersey, and was 
a royalist when his father was a patriot. But all this 
kite flying took place in 1752, before independence 
was much thought of. Franklin had long been busy 
studying electricity, which was then exciting students 
in Europe and America. He had written to his 
friends in Europe that he was very sure they would 


“é 


# 


zw 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 161 


discover the electric fluid, which they were experi- 
menting with by their machines, to be the same as 
the lightning in a thunder-storm; and he advised 
that a man should be placed in a box at the top of a 
high spire or tower, in connection with a pointed rod, 
to see if a thunder-cloud passing near would not give 
out its electricity to the iron rod. There was not a 
steeple in all Philadelphia where Franklin was living, 
so he could not make the trial himself, but like all 
ingenious experimenters he did not wait till the best 
means came. He set about a substitute for the best, 
and having no steeple, he happily thought of trying 
the experiment with a kite. He made his kite of a 
large silk handkerchief, which is a good conductor of 
electricity, and at the end of the perpendicular stick 
he attached a piece of sharp iron wire. He took his 
son William into his secret, and when a thunder-storm 
was coming up the two stole off with their kite to a 
piece of waste land on the outskirts of Philadelphia, 
where there was an old cow-shed. A hempen cord 
held the kite, but a silk thread was attached to it and 
held by Franklin, and between the cord and silk was 
a common door key ; in the shed was a Leyden jar. 
William raised the kite, and I think he must have 
laughed at his father and himself, as he ran down the 
field before the coming storm, let the kite go, and 
saw it tossing and plunging, while his father payed 
out the cord. Then when the kite was well up, they 


both stood under the shed out of the way of the rain 
11 


162 BOSTON TOWN. 


and watched. The cloud passed over the kite, and 
nothing seemed to happen, but suddenly Franklin 
noticed that the fibres of the cord began to rise. It 
was what he had seen in William’s hair when he had 
placed his boy on the electric stand ” — 

“Or rubbed a cat’s back,” suggested Jeff. 

“To be sure. Then he touched his knuckle to the 
key, and a spark flew out. He charged the Leyden 
jar which he had brought with him, and proved 
unmistakably that he was right in supposing the 
electricity to be in the cloud. When the next ship 
came from Europe it brought the news that the ex- 
periment which he had proposed had been tried in a 
steeple and had proved successful. So Franklin at 
once became famous, and that is the reason why the 
words were used of him, ‘ Eripuit coelo fulmen ;’ but 
why the other words, ‘ sceptrumque tyrannis’ ? ”’ 

“| suppose because he was so brave.” 

“Yes, Franklin was brave, not in the way of 
fighting but by his confidence in his countrymen, 
his hope and wise counsel. He was one of the best 
friends America could have in the great struggle for 
Independence, and it helped immensely that a man 
who had won such honor in France and England 
should be such an unhesitating and cheerful friend to 
American union. It had a great deal to do with the 
aid which France gave. But tell me what the third 
inscription is, the one which faces the sea. Come, 
Benjy, it’s your turn.” 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 163 


‘“‘ Faces the sea? that must be toward Washington 
Street.” 

“ Certainly, certainly, but don’t forget that there is 
something beyond Washington Street. Come, what 
teal. 

« Why, the bas-relief is the signing of the Decla- 
ration, and the inscription is 


DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 
4 JULY 1776.” 

“That is right, and isn’t it proper it should be on 
the side looking toward Europe? I think so. Do 
you know why this appears under Franklin’s statue?” 

‘¢ Did he write the Declaration ?”’ 

“ He was one of a committee of five appointed to 
draw it up. Jefferson composed it chiefly, and there 
are a couple of stories told about Franklin in con- 
nection with it which I will read to you, rather than 
tell,” and grandfather took down a book from the 
shelf and read as follows : — 

‘The delegates found a great many things to criti- 
cise and to alter in the document. ‘I was sitting 
by Dr. Franklin,’ says Jefferson, ‘who perceived that 
I was writhing under these mutilations. “I have 
made it a rule,” said he, ‘“‘ whenever in my power, to 
avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be re- 
viewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an 
incident which I will relate to you. When I was a 
journeyman printer, an apprenticed hatter, having 


164 BOSTON TOWN. 


served out his time, was about to open shop for him- 
self. His first concern was to have a handsome sign- 
board with a proper inscription. He composed it in 
these words: John Thompson, Hatter, makes and 
sells Hats for ready Money, — with a figure of a hat 
subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his 
friends for their amendments. The first he showed 
it to thought the word hatter tautologous, because 
followed by the words makes hats, which showed he 
was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed 
that the word makes might as well be omitted, be- 
cause his customers would not care who made the 
hats; if good and to their mind they would buy, by 
whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said 
he thought the words for ready money were useless, 
as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. 
Every one who purchased expected to pay. They 
were parted with, and the inscription now stood, John 
Thompson sells hats. ‘Sells hats,’ says his next 
friend ; ‘ why, nobody will expect you to give them 
away. What, then, is the use of that word?’ It was 
stricken out, and hats followed, the rather as there 
was one painted on the board. So his inscription was 
ultimately reduced to John Thompson, with the fig- 
ure of a hat subjoined.” ’ 

‘* When the members were about to sign the docu- 
ment, Mr. Hancock is reported to have said, ‘ We 
must be unanimous; there must be no pulling difter- 
ent ways; we must all hang together.’ ‘ Yes,’ re- 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 165 


plied Franklin, ‘we must indeed all hang together, or 
most assuredly we shall all hang separately.’ ”’ 
“ But now, Benjy, | must ask you one more ques- 
tion. What is there on the side facing inland ?”’ 
“It says 


TREATY OF PEACE AND INDEPENDENCE. 
3 SEPTEMBER 1783. 


and there are four people, three at a table and one 
in the corner.” 

“Do you know who these people are and where 
they are?” 

“ No, sir.” 

‘‘ They are the commissioners of England and 
America signing the treaty in Paris. Franklin and 
Jay represent America, and Mr. Hartley England. I 
think that must be a messenger who sits waiting in a 
chair. So you see the sculptor has chosen four 
noticeable points in Franklin’s life to engrave at the 
base of his statue. He shows him a printer’s appren- 
tice, tor his fame and fortune rest on the solid basis 
of industry and practical attention ; then he presents 
the philosopher experimenting, for Franklin’s many 
discoveries were worked out by his own hands; and 
finally he makes us see how Franklin’s life was de- 
voted to his country, how he was with the men who 
declared her independence, and with those who made 
the independence good.” 

‘There is one part of Franklin,” said the boys’ 


166 BOSTON TOWN. 


mother, who had been listening, “‘ which does not ap- 
pear on the statue, and that is his Poor Richard.” 

‘‘No, we must look for it in his face, which is so 
kind and so shrewd.” 

‘¢ Who was Poor Richard ? ”’ 

“ Franklin had a way of making little pithy, easily 
remembered sayings; and beginning them ‘ Poor 
Richard says,’ so his maxims came to be called Poor 
Richard’s sayings; and as these were printed in 
almanacs, which were read by people then as the 
newspaper is read now, everybody had them by heart. 
They were such sayings as ‘God helps them that 
help themselves ;’ ‘Three removes are as bad as a 
fire ;’ ‘ A penny saved is a penny earned.’ Some of 
the sayings I suppose were proverbs which Franklin 
had heard, and thought were needed by the people, 
and he printed them again, thus giving them new 
life. For he was thought a very wise man by the 
common people, and his little sayings and stories were 
quoted very much as Adsop’s Fables are.” 

“Were they not almost all meant to teach people 
to be economical, father? I suppose in a new coun- 
try like ours, he thought the first lesson we needed 
was to be taught prudence.” 

“Yes, Franklin was a great teacher of thrift and 
saving. He knew how much it helped a young man 
to lay by a little money every year and put it out at 
interest; and he knew, too, how much a very little 
money would help a young man just setting up in 


AS DOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 167 


business. When he came to be an old man and to 
make his will, he remembered the hard days he had 
had in Boston, and how far a little money went which 
was lent to him when he first set up for himself in 
Philadelphia; he bethought himself of two thousand 
pounds which the State of Pennsylvania owed him, 
and determined to divide it between the city of Phil- 
adelphia and the town of Boston, for the help of just 
such young apprentices as he had been. It was not 
a great sum, however, and if it were given away it 
would soon all be gone; so he made a curious provi- 
sion in his will by which the principal not only was 
not to be disturbed, but was to be added to every 
year, and this was his plan. The thousand pounds 
which he left to Boston was to be under the manage- 
ment of the selectmen of the town, aided by the min- 
isters of the oldest Episcopalian, Congregational, and 
Presbyterian churches. It was to be lent out at in- 
terest in small sums to young married mechanics, not 
over twenty-five years of age, who had been appren- 
tices in the town, and could bring two respectable 
sureties for their bonds, As fast as the money came 
back, the interest would be added to the principal, 
which would thus be all the time growing. It would 
be helping these young mechanics and gathering to 
itself money all the time. The old gentleman was 
very much pleased with this notion, and he began to 
calculate how much the sum would amount to at the 
end of a hundred years; and when he saw how large 


168 | BOSTON TOWN. 


it was, he was so pleased that he did another sum, 
and found what the whole would be at the end of a 
second hundred years. How much do you suppose 
he thought his thousand pounds would earn at the 
end of a hundred years, Jeff ?” 

“At compound interest ?”’ 

eV en.” 

‘And at what rate? ”’ 

“He does not say, but you can do the sum if you 
want to. Franklin calculated that it would amount 
to one hundred and thirty-one thousand pounds at 
the end of a hundred years; and so he made provi- 
sion in his will that at the end of a hundred years, 
the managers of the fund in Boston were to lay out a 
hundred thousand pounds of it in public works, such 
as fortifications, bridges, aqueducts, public buildings, 
baths, pavements, ‘or whatever,’ he said, ‘may make 
living in the town more convenient to its people, and 
render it more agreeable to strangers resorting thither 
for health or a temporary residence.’ Then the re- 
maining thirty-one thousand pounds he meant to 
have lent out again in the same fashion as the first 
thousand pounds had been, and for another hundred 
years; but at the end of that time the loan was to 
cease and all the money which had accumulated was 
to be given away. How much do you suppose he 
thought there would then be?” 

‘A billion,” said Jeff. 

‘“ A centillion,” said Benjy. 


A BOSTON BOY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 169 


‘‘Oh, you won’t be astonished if you guess such 
high figures. I shall have to set you at your slates. 
Franklin computed that at the end of the second 
hundred years his thirty-one thousand pounds would 
have grown to four million and sixty-one thousand 
pounds, and he directed that one million and sixty- 
one thousand pounds should be given outright to 
Boston, the other three millions to the State of Mas- 
sachusetts, and that the trust should then cease.” 

“ When will that be, grandfather ?” 

‘“‘We have not come to the end of the first century 
yet. That will not be for ten years, and you will 
be young men then, and perhaps have something to 
say as to how it shall be used. But the sum does 
not look so large to us in our prosperity as it did to 
Franklin in the day of small things. The fund has 
been caretully managed, however, and will not fall 
far short of what Franklin imagined. But Boston is 
a very different place from what it was when Frank- 
lin fished for minnows in Haymarket Square, and 
served as an apprentice to his brother James. By 
the by, boys, when you were looking for Franklin’s 
house at the corner of Hanover and Union streets, 
did you do as I told you, and look up and down 
Hanover Street, and in Creek and Marshall streets ?”’ 

“ Yes, sir, but we didn’t find anything.” 

“Didn't find anything! Why, where were your 
eyes? I shall have to take you myself and point out 
with my stick what you ought to have seen. Be off 


170 | BOSTON TOWN. 


with you to bed now, or I shall get my stick to- 
night.” The boys scampered away, but grandfather 
was as good as his word, for the next afternoon he 
took them with him on a walk down Hanover Street. 
When he had come nearly to Blackstone Street, he 
stopped on the northern sidewalk, wheeled them 
about facing the buildings on the other side and bade 
them look sharp. 

‘“‘T see it,” said Jeff, first. ‘“‘ What is it? Is it a 
bas-relief ? ”’ 

“Tt is a coat of arms cut in stone,” said grandfa- 
ther. ‘‘ Noble families used to have coats of arms, 
somewhat as a nation has a flag, or a state has a seal, 
and besides great families, certain corporations and 
guilds had them. This is one, I believe, which be- 
longed to the Painters’ Guild. Can you make out 
the letters and the date?” 

The boys made out the letters 


C 
it, K 


but they were perplexed over the date. 

‘““T can see a 7 and an 0,” said Benjy. 

“The other figures are not very distinct, but they 
are both 1. The date is 1701. And what is the 
motto at the bottom?” But neither of them could 
make it out. Just then a cart drove up to the door 
of the building where the stone was. A good-nat- 
ured man jumped down from it, and grandfather 
crossed the street with the two boys. 


Ay BOSTON BOY -OF THE LAST CENTURY. A171 


“May we climb up to your seat?” he asked the 
man. “We want to get a closer look at that piece 
of carving.” The man followed with his eye the di- 
rection of grandfather’s stick. 

“That! why I never saw that before. Yes, get 
up on the wagon if you like,” and as they climbed 
upon the seat, the man himself stepped out into the 
street to get a look at the arms. 

“Amor,” began Jeff. “I can make that out. 
Amorque.” 

“Tut, tut, lad. Do they teach you in the Latin 
School that que follows the first word of the pair ? 
Try again.” , 

“Que — at, queat, is it, grandfather ?”’ 

‘Tt looks like it.” 

‘“‘Obediencia,” said Benjy, who had been giving his 
attention to the last word in the line. 

“ Amor queat obedientia, it is,” said grandfather, 
“though the stone-cutter seems to have spelled the 
last word witha ec.” They got down from the cart. 

‘What do you make it to be?” asked the owner 
of the wagon. 

“Tt is the coat of arms of the old Painters’ Guild,” 
said grandfather, “ dated 1701, with the initials C T 
K, and the motto, Amor queat obedientia. What 
does that mean, Jeff?” 

‘“‘ | know love and obedience,” said the boy,‘ but I 
don’t know queat.” 

“ Well,” said the man, who had been listening, and 


172 BOSTON TOWN. 


now turned to go into a shop, “if you know love and 
obedience, it ’s not much matter about queat.’’ 

“What does it mean, grandfather?” the boys 
asked as they walked along. 

‘‘T think I should translate it, ‘ Let love stand for 
obedience,’ or, ‘ T'ake the will for the deed,’ but I am 
not quite sure,” 

‘¢ And how came the arms here ?”’ 

“T think it was brought over by a painter from 
England, who set up his shop here about 1700. See, 
here is Boston Stone.” They had come to the corner 
of Marshall and Creek streets, and stood by the stone 
imbedded in the foundation wall, with its spherical 
stone atop. ‘The boys read the letters and figures 
sunk deep in the stone. 





“What is it?” they asked. 

“Tt is said to have been originally a portion of the 
stone paint-mill brought over by the painter. The 
upper stone was the grinder. Just how it came to 
be used as Boston Stone | do not know, and if there 


MebUSTONGEOY OF THE LASTACRENTURY..” lid 


were not a London Stone we should be at a loss to 
understand what it meant at all; but in London there 
is a very ancient stone imbedded in the wall of a 
church and known as London Stone. It is surmised 
that it was the point from which distances were meas- 
ured, like the golden mile-stone in Rome, and it was 
a fixed locality which people knew, and just as you 
see shops advertised now as opposite the Old South, 
so you would hear of shops by London Stone. It is 
my belief that Boston Stone was named so by some 
one who came over from London, and used to have 
a shop near London Stone, and so thought he would 
have his shop near Boston Stone, and had these let- 
ters and date cut. But I cannot tell you anything 
more about it, though I have been told that it was 
once used as a starting-point for surveyors.” 


CHAPTER X. 
FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 


As they came back from their walk that after- 
noon, they caught sight of Sam Adams upon his ped- 
estal at the head of New Washington Street. The 
boys fell to wondering at the tea-table why the city 
had placed the statue just there. 

‘“‘Tt is so that he can have an eye on Faneuil Hall,” 
said Jeff. 

“No,” said Benjy. ‘1 am pretty sure he was a 
ship-carpenter, and he was put down at the North 
End, where there were ship-yards.”’ | 

“| think Jeff must be nearer right,’ said grand- 
father. ‘Sam Adams was not a ship-carpenter; his 
father, I believe, was a brewer, and lived on Pur- 
chase Street, but the Faneuil Hall which the statue 
of Sam Adams sees is not the one in which the real 
Sam Adams spoke. It is the third building which 
has been known as Faneuil Hall, but I should not 
at all wonder if Sam Adams was present when the 
first Faneuil Hall was opened. Peter Faneuil was 
a Frenchman by birth, the nephew of a Boston mer- 
chant, who came over from France when the Hugue- 
nots were persecuted, and made a large fortune here. 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. hay, 


He left it to his nephew Peter, and Peter offered to 
build for the town of Boston a market-house on land 














Ne 








Sam Adams. 


near the old Town Dock, which had been filled in 
and reclaimed from the sea. There was no market 
in Boston at that time, though there had been three, 


176 ) BOSTON TOWN. 


and for some reason people were very much divided 
on the question whether there should be one or not. 

















The Faneuil Hall of the Revolution. 
When Peter Faneuil’s offer was made, a town-meet- 
ing was held to see what should be done. The Town 
House was not big enough to hold the crowd, and 
they adjourned to the Brattle Street Meeting-House. 
They fought over the gift, and finally accepted it 
only by seven votes, three hundred and sixty voting 
against it, and three hundred and sixty-seven for it. 
The meeting was held in July, 1740, and Sam Adams 
had just graduated at Harvard College, so I think 
it is very likely indeed that he was present; for 


FANEUIL HALL-AND SAM ADAMS. Lit 


his father was a prominent Boston man, and Sam 
himself had begun to take an interest in public mat- 
ters. The hall was built, the lower part for a mar- 
ket, the upper part for a hall, and here the annual 
town-meetings were now held. At the very first meet- 
ing in Faneuil Hall I am sure Sam Adams must have 
been present, for Peter Faneuil had died, and John 
Lovell, who had been Sam Adams’s master at your 
Latin School, gave a funeral address there before a 
thousand people. They hung portraits in the hall, as 
now, and one of the first to be placed there was that 
of King George the Second, who was king of England 
when the hall was built, and called by all good Bos- 
ton people our Sovereign Lord and King, and His 
most Gracious Majesty. The town-meetings had been 
growing too large for the Town House, and the peo- 
ple found Faneuil Hall a very convenient place in 
which to meet. They had pretty stormy times in 
Boston then, and when Sam Adams had left college 
and was establishing himself in life, he had many 
opportunities for learning how the people felt and 
how they were talking. Iam not sure but one rea- 
son why the town was so evenly divided over Peter 
Faneuil’s gift was because there were two strong 
parties: the court party, which included the governor, 
all the officers of the crown, and a large proportion of 
the rich men; and opposed to the court party a large 
body of plainer people, the tradesmen and mechanics, 


with a few determined men who were their leaders. 
12 


178 BOSTON TOWN. 


At any rate there were some violent town-meetings 
about this time, or a little later, and uncommonly hard 
words were used. The people complained that Boston 
‘was not working for itself and its own prosperity, but 
for England; that the English laws were made to 
draw away all the riches from Boston working people, 
and put the money into the hands of London mer- 
chants and a few men in Boston; that taxes were 
growing heavier, and British naval officers were press- 
ing Boston seamen into their service. You do not 
know what that means, children, but to our fathers it 
was a sore grievance. The British navy or the British 
army needed more men; there were no volunteers, 
and the officers had power to seize upon men where 
they could find them, and press them into service. 
The law, indeed, had forbidden this impressment in 
the colonies, except in the case of deserters; but Brit- 
ish captains found a way to evade the law, and the 
Boston people complained in town-meeting in 1746 
that they had lost lately as many as three thousand 
seamen from Boston, largely from this cause, for not 
only were a great many impressed, but still more 
had fled out of New England to escape impressment. 
There was in fact a riot in Boston the next year 
after this, which showed how strongly the town felt. 
“ Commodore Knowles, a British naval officer, had 
brought his fleet into Boston harbor and anchored in 
Nantasket Roads. The life of a sailor in the service 
was a pretty hard one then, and those especially who 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 179 


.had been pressed without their own consent were 
very restless, so that there were a good many deser- 
tions from the ships. One day in November Knowles 
determined to fill up his ranks again, and sent his 
boats out to carry away from vessels that were just 
ready to sail such sailors as he wanted, and then 
swooped down on the wharves and carried off not 
only seamen, but ship-carpenters and boys. The town 
was all ablaze with excitement, and there was a rising 
among the mechanics in the north part, whose rela- 
tives had been seized. They caught up cutlases, 
sticks, stones, and tools, and began rushing through 
the streets, looking for some one to revenge them- 
selves on. It was early in the morning, and happen- 
ing to find one of Commodore Knowles’s lieutenants, 
who had had however nothing to do with the affair, 
they laid hold of him and locked him up, and then 
started for the Province House, where it was said that 
several English officers were staying. Rumors of 
what was going on had got afloat, and some friends 
of Governor Shirley outran the mob and warned him 
of what was coming. Soon they surged into the 
court-yard and filled all the space there. The offi- 
cers who were in the house drew their swords, and 
for a moment it looked as if there would be an attack, 
when a sheriff, with more zeal than wisdom, came 
along and ordered the mob to disperse. They turned 
upon him and dragged him along, laughing at his 
discomfiture and hooting at him. A mob is easily 


180 BOSTON TOWN. 


turned, and all the people now left the Province , 
House to see what was to be done with the poor 
sheriff. They dragged him to the front of the Town 
Hall, where stood the stocks, and clapped him into 
them, and were so entertained with this turning of 
the tables that their fury was moderated a little, and 
as they were getting hungry besides, the more part 
went home to dinner, and in the afternoon there 
were crowds and knots again of men who were con- 
sulting what should be done next. The General 
Court was holding its sessions in the Town-House, 
and meeting in the evening; when it was dusk and 
work was done, the people began gathering before 
the building, swarming from the wharves up into 
King Street, in the great open space which you can 
still see below the old State House. They called 
upon the General Court to redress their wrongs, and 
some of the noisier and more violent began to hurl 
stones and brickbats against the building, and the 
windows of the council chamber crashed in. Gov- 
ernor Shirley was a brave man and came out upon the 
balcony above the crowd, and made a little speech, 
telling them to be patient, that he was on their side, 
and the General Court would see that justice was 
done, but they must not be riotous. The crowd was 
getting unruly and his words did little good, so he 
took the advice of his friends and went back to his 
house. Meanwhile the people demanded that all the 
officers of the fleet should be seized and held until 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 181 


the men who had been impressed were released, and 
hearing that a barge had landed from the fleet, they 
all rushed down to seize it. It was a mistake, though 
they did not know it at the time, for it was a boat 
belonging’ to a merchant vessel, but they seized it 
and dragged it up in front of the Province House. 
There they meant to make a bonfire of it, but reflect- 
ing that they might endanger their own houses and 
shops, they dragged it off into the fields and burned 
it there. The governor heard the cries and saw the 
flames and determined to put the mob down; so the 
next morning he ordered drums to be beat to call out 
the militia, but not a drum was heard. ‘Then he saw 
that he had lost control, and that the militia were 
probably ready to help the people and not to put 
down the riot. He withdrew to the Castle in the har- 
bor, and now affairs began to look serious. The com- 
modore declared that unless the officers who had been 
arrested, were returned to him, he should draw up 
his ships and open on the town. ‘The town, on the 
other hand, declared they would listen to nothing but 
the return of the kidnapped men, and that they 
would not give up the officers till these were sent 
ashore. For three days this lasted. The General 
Court passed a series of resolutions calling on the 
people to sustain the government, but at the same 
time saying that the wrongs should be redressed. 
The people met in town-meeting and discussed the 
affair, and as no blood had been shed, the talk was a 


182 BOSTON TOWN. 


safety-valve, and most likely the best friends of the 
people, men like Sam Adams’s father, gave good ad- 
vice both to the people and to the governor, who was 
after all too shrewd a man to put himself in direct 
opposition to the town. The result was that the mi- 
litia was called out again, and this time they came in 
great pomp and escorted the governor back to the 
Province House, but the price at which the governor 
purchased this peace was the restoration of all the 
kidnapped men. The British officers were released, 
and Captain Knowles sailed out of Boston Harbor 
with a pretty clear notion that the peppery little town 
had got the better of his majesty’s government in 
the quarrel. But then he was in the wrong himself, 
and that was what made his side of the controversy 
weak.” 

“J wish I could go to a town-meeting,” said Jeff. 

“It would be worth your while to if you ever were 
in the country in the spring of the year. Then you 
would see how Boston used to govern itself. The 
notice of town-meeting at first used to be given from 
house to house, and every six months officers were 
chosen to rule the town, but after a few years, the 
time was changed to once a year. Then the notice 
for town-meeting came to be posted on the churches 
and in public places, and the day when it was to be 
held was so important that people did not mind their 
private business but flocked to the Town House, or, 
later, to Faneuil Hall. They came together in the 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 183 


morning, and usually could not finish the business, 
but when dinner time came adjourned to the after- 
noon, and sometimes had to adjourn over to another 
day then; and when Faneuil Hall could not hold all 
the people on-some exciting occasion, they would 
adjourn town-meeting to the Old South or to Brat- 
tle Street Church. From the very beginning the 
people had learned to rule themselves. The Charter 
which they brought with them gave them the right 
to choose their own rulers, and when they had once 
begun to use this right in choosing the governor and 
the members of the General Court, it was easy to 
extend it to the election of town officers. Then, as 
the towns increased in number, each was a compact 
little community and had questions to settle which 
they could only settle among themselves. They 
needed some one to look after stray cattle, and they 
chose a pound-keeper ; people littered up the shore 
and wharves, so they needed a water-bailiff; they 
had a market, and wanted a clerk; and then they 
needed men to have oversight of the different trades, 
to weigh fish and hay and measure wood. They 
were used to some of these offices in England, but 
there such were appointed by the king; here they 
chose them for themselves, and chose their own 
sheriffs and constables. In this way everybody who 
was a man grown had something to do with manag- 
ing the town, and if things went wrong he could 
make his complaint in town-meeting and get other 


184 BOSTON TOWN. 


people who agreed with him to change the govern- 
ment. At first only those who were members of the 
church were allowed to vote, but afterwards all cit- 
izens could ; and even when the Charter was taken 
away, and governors were sent over from England, 
although the power was taken somewhat out of the 
hands of the people, they still had their right to vote, 
and had their town-meetings. At these meetings 
they would draw up instructions for their delegates 
to General Court. If they did not like what the goy- 
ernor was doing, and thought themselves oppressed 
by taxes or governed by unjust laws, they talked long 
and loud in their town-meeting, and drew up vigor- 
ous papers for their delegates. In this way the peo- 
ple were kept constantly vigilant and ready to defend 
their liberties, and they were so outspoken that the 
governor and his friends always had to be on their 
guard. At the first sign of anything that looked like 
injustice, the people were pretty sure to start up. 
The Knowles Riot showed what they might do, and 
it was not the last of the disturbances. Did you ever 
see the carving of the Liberty Tree in the face of a 
building at the corner of Washington and Essex 
streets, opposite the Boylston Market ?”’ 

PAY Gav eir. e 

“ And what was the Liberty Tree?” There was 
a silence, and the boys looked at each other. 

“Tt was —I think it was a tree with a flag-staff 
through it,” said Jeff finally. 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 185 


‘ That’s not a bad answer, but why was it called 
Liberty Tree? You don’t know? Well, I will tell 
you. Where the corner of Wash- : 
ington and Hssex streets now is 
Was once an open green, and on 
the green stood some great elms. 
One of them was a very com- | 
manding one, and was said to | 

| 





















have been planted in 1646. It |) 4 a ce Wes ‘ 
had great spreading branches, Mi, oF ii sii 


and public meetings used to be | | | iM A AA 
held on the green, beneath it, | i Mh | NAL 
which was known as Hanover ll Ne a “ROR KK 
Square. There had been a grow- eu tT i Mit 
ing discontent with Great Brit- ae veel 
ain, especially among the me- LIINIJNIMi@iiz ei i/MICL 
chanics, the ship-builders, and others alike business 
had been seriously obstructed by the laws made in Eng- 
land to govern the trade of the colonies. These laws 
had made a few men in Boston rich, but had helped 
to make a great many more poor, and yet these poor 
men had grown up with the right to help in the gov- 
ernment of the town and with a pride in Boston. 
When it was learned that the British Parliament pro- 
posed to pass a stamp act, the people were loud in 
their indignation.” 

‘‘ Grandfather,’ broke in Jeff, “I never did un- 
derstand what the stamp act was. I wish you would 
tell us.”’ 
































































































186 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Tt was a bill which compelled everybody in the 
colonies, when he transacted any business which re- 
quired a legal paper, to fix upon the paper a stamp 
which he must buy of the king’s officers, or else it 
would not be legal. During our war for the Union, 
there was a law requiring every person who gave a 
receipt for goods which he sold to fix a stamp upon 
it, or else the receipt was good for nothing. We fix 
them still to bank checks, and to some legal papers 
and manufactured articles. We call them revenue 
stamps.” 

‘Oh, I know revenue stamps,” said Benjy. “I’ve 
got them in my stamp-book.” 

“ And why are they called revenue stamps? What 
is the difference between them and postage stamps ?”’ 

“You put postage stamps on letters.” 

Wits 

‘They would n’t go if you did n’t.” 

“The stamps don’t make the letters trot along, do 
they ?”’ 

“ Not even if you lick’em,” said Jeff smartly. 

“Tut, tut, Jeff. But tell me, don’t you know what 
the stamp is for ?” 

“It must be to pay for the cost of carrying the 
letters.” 

“ Kxactly. We pay three cents to the United 
States for carrying our letter, and the stamp is a 
receipt for the money pasted on the letter. Now the 
revenue stamps are issued by the government to help 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 187 


pay the expenses of government. The law says to 
me, — You must bear your share of the expenses, and 
so whenever you draw a check at the bank, you must 
pay the government two cents, and the two cent rey- 
enue stamp which the government sells you shows 
that you have done it. The money which comes from 
the sale of these stamps is revenue to the govern- 
ment, its income with which it helps pay for the 
army and navy, and public buildings and courts of 
law, and pensions, and many other things which go 
to making -it possible for us all to live at peace and 
bring up our families in this country. We are will- 
ing to pay taxes and buy stamps for this, because we 
choose the Congress which passes the laws imposing 
taxes and duties, and we agree each to pay these 
little sums for the general good. Now in 1765 we 
were colonies of Great Britain, and Great Britain 
said, — You must not buy certain goods from the 
West Indies, but your ships must carry them first to 
us in England, and we will sell them to you; the 
goods will cost you a little more than if you brought 
them straight from the West Indies to Boston and 
New York, but that is of little consequence; we 
want to make some money out of the business. The 
consequence was that captains and sailors and the 
merchants who owned the ships thought this very 
unjust, and began to smuggle goods into the coun- 
try, to avoid paying duties on goods at the custom- 
house ; whereupon the English said that the officers 


188 BOSTON TOWN. 


of the crown, if they suspected anybody of concealing 
smuggled goods, could demand of the law court what 
was called a writ of assistance, by which they could 
enter houses and search for the goods. The people — 
were indignant at this, and were so roused that the 
king’s officers thought it prudent not to push mat- 
ters. But the proposed stamp act created the great- 
est feeling. It was a direct tax for which they got 
nothing in return, and it was a tax about which they 
could say nothing. Hundreds of thousands of dollars 
were to be taken from them, and it was said that the 
money was to be used just to build a new palace for 
the king in London. ‘They said that if the king had. 
the right to tax them in this way when he wanted 
money, what was to prevent him from laying a tax 
upon their land itself, and of taking from them the 
right of self-government which they had so long en- 
joyed ? 

“T have not forgotten Liberty Tree. One morn- 
ing, it was the fourteenth of August, 1765, as people 
came out of their houses near by, they discovered a 
stuffed figure hanging from one of the branches ; its 
dress, and some rude likeness perhaps to his face, 
showed for whom it was intended — Andrew Oliver, 
who had been lieutenant-governor a few years before, 
and was now the officer who held the stamps, and 
whose business it was to sell them. Near by hung 
another figure, it was an immense boot, and out of it 
was thrust a head with horns. Every one laughed 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 189 


when they saw this last; they knew what it meant, 
—a jest upon the Earl of Bute, an English nobleman 
whom everybody believed to be the real originator of 
-the stamp act. There the images hung swinging in 
the air. It was as much as to say, —— Look at Oliver 
and Lord Bute! We would hang them if we could. 
It was the greatest indignity that could be offered, 
but nobody knew how the effigies came upon the 
tree. All day long people flocked from other parts 
of the town, and came in across Roxbury Neck to see 
the images and jeer at them. Lieutenant-governor 
Hutchinson ordered the sheriff to take them down, 
_ but the sheriff knew that if he attempted it there 

would be a riot, and he refused. When night-fall 
came, certain men appeared and began to take down 
the figures. Nobody objected now, for these men 
were known to belong to the company of citizens 
called Sons of Liberty. They had with them a hand- 
bier upon which they placed the effigies. They pre- 
tended these had hung till they were dead. and must 
now be buried or burned. There marched off a 
great procession of the Sons of Liberty, followed by 
crowds of men, women, and children, that warm Au- 
gust evening. It was a still march. No one but the 
Sons of Liberty knew what was to be done. Down 
Washington Street, though it was not known then by 
that name, they marched, tramping along to the 
Town House. There were open arches below, the 
council chamber being above, where the governor 


190 BOSTON TOWN. 


and council were sitting. ‘Liberty, Property, and no 
Stamps,’ they shouted as they marched along, down 
King Street, and so along Kilby Street, to about 
where Water Street crosses it, and there they halted 
in front of the frame of a new building. The crowd 
set up a shout. It was a structure which Oliver was 
putting up, and everybody said it was to be the new 
stamp office. The Sons of Liberty began to tear 
down the timbers, and the crowd fell upon the frame 
with a will; they hurled some of the sticks into the 
dock close by, and dragged the rest after them as 
they kept on their march to Fort Hill to Oliver’s 
house. Here they made a great bonfire and burned 
the effigies. Some of the more unruly broke the 
windows of his house, tore up his fences to feed the 
fire, and tramped about his garden, and even got into 
the house, but before night was over the mob melted 
away. Oliver found it necessary to take refuge at 
the Castle in the harbor, and afterwards resigned his 
office.” 

“YT wish I had one of the stamps,” said Benjy, 
whose ambition was to fill his stamp book. 

“| have seen pictures of the stamps, but I don’t 
know that I ever saw one,” said grandfather. ‘ The 
stamp act was repealed, you know, but not before the 
people all over the country had shown by their res- 
olution that it was impossible to enforce the law. 
They stopped business rather than pay the hated 
stamp tax. In Boston they made Oliver read his res- 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 191 


ignation before a great multitude of people in Liberty 
Hall, as they had begun to call the open space about 
Liberty Tree. In all the public discussion of the 
time Sam Adams was a prominent figure. He wrote 
in the papers, he spoke in General Court, to which 
he had been elected, and he addressed the people in 
Faneuil Hall and under Liberty Tree. There were 
political clubs formed which gave opportunity to the 
Bostonians to take counsel together and help form 
public opinion. For years there had been a caucus 
club at the North End, made up chiefly of ship-build- 
ing mechanics, and now this club took in some of the 
prominent men like Sam Adams, whose father had 
been a leading member, and James Otis, and Cush- 
ing, Dr. Warren, and Dr. Cooper. 

‘¢ When the news came of the repeal of the stamp 
act, the town was full of excitement and joy. What 
is the nearest church to the Liberty Tree, Jeff ?”’ 

Jeff thought a moment, and then said: ‘The Hol- 
lis Street Church — is n't it ?” 

“Yes, and it was also in 1766, the year of the re- 
peal. At one o'clock in the morning after the news 
had come, the bell in the tower of that church began 
ringing ; then the bell in Christ Church answered, 
and soon every bell in town was ringing. Guns were 
fired, and drums beat, and bands of music were play- 
ing loudly before two o’clock. I don’t believe there 
was much sleep for anybody that morning. The peo- 
ple hung flags from the steeples and tops of houses. 


192 BOSTON TOWN. 


They kept up the excitement all day, and when night 
came houses were illuminated and fireworks were set 
off on the Common, more splendid than any one be- 
fore had known. Rich merchants threw open their 
doors, and the town gave itself up to a general cele- 
bration. Every year afterward for several years the 
date of March 18, the day of the repeal, was cele- 
brated by the people, as was also the 14th of August, 
the day of the outbreak against Oliver. The people 
would meet in Liberty Hall, under the tree, show the 
British flag from the flag-staff which ran up through 
the tree, sing songs, hear speeches, make long proces- 
sions, and separate more determined than ever to 
stand up for their liberty. The leaders kept alive 
this spirit, for some of them were far-sighted, and 
began to see that their rulers in Massachusetts and 
the British Parliament were determined to show 
themselves masters. ‘The Boston people, with the 
other towns, had secured the repeal of the stamp act, 
but they knew that when Parliament did this it also 
passed a resolution declaring that it had ‘ authority 
to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases 
whatsoever, and that made it very certain that the 
struggle was to go on until one side or the other 
acknowledged itself beaten. 

‘And now came a sharper test in Boston. It was 
pretty clear to the governor that he had not much 
power. The selectmen of Boston seemed to have 
more authority, and Sam Adams was a great deal 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 193 


more influential man, and yet the governor held his 
office by authority from the king of England. When 
a schooner laden with molasses was seized by the cus- 
tom-house officers for trying to evade the payment of 
duties, thirty Boston men went by night and took the 
schooner away from the keepers placed on board, and 
carried off the molasses. To be sure, the selectmen 
ordered it restored, but it was evident that the gov- 
ernor could not do it. He had been urging the Brit- 
ish government to send a garrison to Boston, for he 
thought if he could have some regiments in town he 
could make people mind. ‘Two or three little affairs 
like that of the schooner determined the government, 
and they sent troops. You see in England the king 
and his ministers troubled themselves very little 
about Boston. They knew that the colonies were 
growing rich, and they wanted to get all the money 
they could out of them; and when the governor 
wrote that the Boston people were troublesome and 
rebellious, they thought of nothing else than to make 
them mind, and what was better for this purpose 
than a good garrison of troops? There were indeed 
some men in Parliament—men like Conway and 
Barre, and Burke and Pitt— who were able to see 
that the Americans were Englishmen, to be regarded 
as having the rights of Englishmen; but to most of 
those in power they were a distant, subject people, 
to be ruled and made profitable to the merchants of 


London. In the fall of 1768 troops were sent to 
13 


194 BOSTON TOWN. 


Boston. The people refused to furnish barracks for 
them. They were indignant at what they felt to be 
an outrage, and since the town would not supply 
quarters, they were compelled to see soldiers en- 
camped on the Common and quartered in Faneuil 
Hall and the Town House. In the harbor command- 
ing the town was a fleet of eight men-of-war, with 
more than a hundred and eighty guns. 

‘“ Nothing brings about a conflict so quickly as hav- 
ing your enemy always before you, and the presence 
of the troops inflamed the people terribly. The goy- 
ernor meanwhile and officers of the crown felt that 
now they were more than a match for the Sons of 
Liberty, and began to threaten all sorts of terrible 
things. Sam Adams and the other members of the 
political clubs were determined to have the troops 
removed, not only because they felt it to be an in- 
dignity, but because their presence was a constant 
menace, and the town was always in danger of break- 
ing out into violence. Exactly this did happen on 
the 5th of March, 1770. Every once in a while 
there had been a scrimmage between the soldiers and 
towns-people, when clubs were used and heads broken. 
Each little encounter made bitterer feeling, and on 
this evening two young men were passing through 
an alley near what is now the corner of Cornhill 
and Washington Street, by some barracks which had 
finally been erected for the soldiers. A sentinel was 
pacing there, and according to military custom chal- 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 195 


lenged the young men, ‘ Who goes there?’ They 
made no answer, or else a saucy one, and undertook 
to pass him. He put out his gun to stop them, and 
they tried to push by. There was a scuffle, and some 
of the soldiers in the barracks came out without 
weapons except such as they had caught up, a fire 
shovel, or a poker, or pair of tongs; they were too 
many for the young men, and drove them back 
through the alley. Thereupon there was a great 
crowding to the place. The people in the neighbor- 
hood were always on the qui vive, and rushed to the 
rescue. The officers called in the soldiers to avoid a 
fight, and the crowd which had come together sud- 
denly, and were ready for any excitement, began 
roaming down the streets, and discovered another 
sentinel posted before the door of the Custom-House, 
which stood on State Street, where the building now 
is containing the Union and State Banks. A boy 
called out that he was the soldier who had knocked 
him down a day or two before, and the crowd, asking 
no better excuse, fell upon the sentinel, and began 
throwing snow-balls at him. He tried to enter the 
building, but the door was locked. He loaded his 
gun, and that made the crowd more furious; he be- 
gan to call for help, and an officer near by sent a 
squad of six soldiers, and then dispatched a messen- 
ger for Captain Preston, the officer of the day, who 
was at an entertainment in Concert Hall, at the head 
of Hanover Street. The soldiers charged their guns, 


196 BOSTON TOWN. 


fixed their bayonets, and stood in front of the Cus- 
tom-House, holding back the crowd as well as they 
could, which grew and grew, for the bells were now 
ringing, and the whole town was in commotion. It 
was an unruly, angry mob of men, and when they 
saw Captain Preston coming with a half dozen more 
men they grew angrier still. They began to taunt 
the soldiers, and to dare them to fire. ‘ Fire, if you 
dare!’ they cried; ‘Come on, you lobster backs !’ 
for the British soldier, you know, wore a red coat. 
Finally, somebody in the crowd struck a soldier with 
a club. ‘This was too much for the soldier’s patience. 
Without asking for orders, he leveled his piece and 
fired. Instantly some of his comrades in the excite- 
ment, hearing the gun, let off their muskets at the 
crowd, and the mob, as all mobs are likely to do, 
turned and fled, for they had no fire-arms, and the 
soldiers found half a dozen or more men wounded, 
three already dead on the ground. 

‘The drums were beat now, and an entire regi- 
ment marched into the street. The whole town be- 
gan swarming into the place, but there was no longer 
a mob. Things had become serious, and the select- 
men and principal townsmen were on hand. The 
governor appeared on the balcony of the Town 
House, looking down the street, and promised that 
there should be a full investigation. Captain Preston 
asked for a trial, and, giving himself up, was com- 
mitted to jail. The soldiers who had fired were also 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 197 


placed in jail, and a company of citizens, to help keep 
order, patrolled the streets. The next day a great 
town-meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, and the peo- 
ple sent a committee to demand the withdrawal of the 
troops. Sam Adams was at the head of the commit- 
tee, and they went before the governor, who tried to 
parley with them to gain time. He declared that 
he had no authority to send away the troops; that 
General Gage, in New York, was the only one who 
could do this, but that one of the regiments would be 
removed to. the Castle in the harbor. This was in 
the morning ; all day long people had been pouring 
into town over the Neck and by Charlestown Ferry. 
The meeting had adjourned till three o'clock to hear 
the report of the committee, and when the hour came 
there was not room in Faneuil Hall, and so the Old 
South was opened and the people rushed into that, 
but the street was full from the Town [louse to the 
Old South. At length the committee, headed by 
Adams, came out from the Council Chamber with the 
written answer of the governor. The crowd parted 
to make way for them, and when they entered the 
Old South the people kept silence to hear the report. 
The chairman of the meeting put the question, — 

“Ts the answer satisfactory ? Those who are in 
favor of accepting it will say Aye.’ The meeting- 
house was crammed with three thousand people. A 
single answer came, — 


ee ¢ Ave,’ 


198 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Then from the multitude burst a tremendous 
‘No!’ A new committee was appointed, with Sam 
Adams still as chairman, to make a final demand, and 
while the people still stood and sat expectant, the 
committee went again to the Town Hall, where were 
the governor, — or rather lieutenant-governor, for 
Hutchinson held 
that office, Gov- 
ernor Bernard 
having gone to 
England, — and 
his council, and 
the British army 
 ,and navy offi- 

° cers.” 
“ Oh, I should 
- like to have been 
there!” exclaim- 
ed Jeff. 

“Should you? 
So should I, and 
I should like to 
see a picture of 


a y, the scene. Years 
Lids afterward John 
Adams was writ- 

ing to a friend of this very event, and saying what 


a picture it would make. I will read you what he 
wrote,” and grandfather took down from a shelf the 





FANEUIL HALL’ AND SAM ADAMS. 199 


tenth volume of John Adams’s works, and read as 
follows : — 

“¢Now for the picture. The theatre and the 
scenery are the same with those at the discussion of 
the Writs of Assistance. The same glorious portraits 
of King Charles the Second and King James the Sec- 
ond, to which might be added, and should be added, 
little miserable likenesses of Governor Winthrop, 
Governor Bradstreet, Governor Endicott, and Gov- 
ernor Belcher, hung up in obscure corners of the 
room. Lieutenant-governor Hutchinson, commander- 
in-chiet in the absence of the governor, must be 
placed at the head of the council table. Lieutenant- 
colonel Dalrymple, commander-in-chief of his majes- 
ty’s military forces, taking rank of all his majesty’s 
councilors, must be seated by the side of the heuten- 
ant-governor and commander-in-chief of the Prov- 
ince. Hight-and-twenty councilors must be painted, 
all seated at the council board. Let me see: what 
costume? What was the fashion of that day in the 
month of March? Large white wigs, English scarlet- 
cloth coats, some of them with gold-laced hats; not 
on their heads, indeed, in so august a presence, but 
on the table before them, or under the table beneath 
them. Before these illustrious personages appeared 
Samuel Adams, a member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and their clerk, now at the head of the 
committee of the great assembly at the Old South 
Church.’ 


200 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘It was late in the afternoon,” continued grand- 
father, ‘‘ and Adams knew that the matter must be 
settled then and there. He repeated what the town- 
meeting had decided, that the answer was unsatisfac- 
tory. Hutchinson again said, ‘I have no power to 
remove them.’ But he had already agreed to send 
one regiment, the most hated one, to the Castle. 
Adams saw his advantage. He stood betore Hutch- 
inson, stretched out his arm, which quivered with his 
suppressed excitement, and said, ‘ If you have power 
to remove one regiment, you have power to remove 
both. It is at your peril if you refuse. The meeting 
is composed of three thousand people. They are be- 
come impatient. A thousand men are already ar- 
rived from the neighborhood, and the whole coun- 
try is inmotion. Night is approaching. An imme- 
diate answer is expected. Both regiments or none.’ 
Ah, boys!” said the old gentleman, who in his excite- 
ment had jumped from his chair and was pacing the 
room, “ would n't I like to have heard Adams say 
that ! ” 

‘And what did Hutchinson say, grandfather ?”’ 

‘He had to give in! He had to give in! He asked 
the gentlemen around him. They were wise enough 
to know that thousands of men would have flocked 
into Boston and compelled him to send the troops 
away, and they told him so; and Adams went back to 
the Old South, and reported Colonel Dalrymple’s 
promise that he would begin to move the troops the 


FANEUIL HALL AND SAM ADAMS. 201 


next day. It wasa great thing, boys; it was a real 
victory, — the victory of resolute men without arms, 
but backed by justice, over two regiments of the 
king’s army, and the affair was so famous that the 
regiments came to be called Sam Adams’s regiments. 
They were his. He as the spokesman of Boston town 
really commanded them, and ordered them away. 
People called that affray on King Street the Boston 
Massacre ; if was a big name for what was a small 
affair, so far as numbers go, but it was a name which 
meant a great deal, and every year, until the war 
for independence made it less significant, the people 
of Boston came together on the 5th of March and 
held a great meeting, and listened to an oration by 
some distinguished man. It was their Fourth of July, 
for they knew that it marked the beginning of great 
events.” 

“ What did they do with Captain Preston?” asked 
Benjy. 

“They gave him a fair trial, and two of the best 
lawyers in Boston — Josiah Quincy and John Adams 
—defended him. That was a fine thing, too. It 
showed that the Boston men were ready to submit 
to honest law, and were not merely a set of lawless 
rebels. Preston was acquitted, for it was proved that 
he did not give the order to fire. Of the soldiers, 
six were brought in not guilty, and two were con- 
victed of manslaughter, but the extreme penalty was 
not visited on them. They were branded on the 
open hand, and then discharged.” 


202 BOSTON TOWN. 


“But there were troops in Boston when the war 
began, grandfather.” 

“Yes, they came back with Gage in 1774, for by 
that time England knew that she had estranged 
America, and that there were people here who were 
becoming every year more determined to resist her, 
if she continued to govern them according to her own 
notion, and for her own profit, without consulting 
them. It was when the English troops were in gar- 
rison that your Latin School boys found their coast 
spoiled.” 

‘“‘T know that story,” said Jeff. “I have seen the 
picture, too, of the Boston boys before General 
Gage.” 

“ Have a care, Jeff. Your history will have to be 
corrected. It was General Haldimand whose ser- 
vant sprinkled ashes on the coast. Haldimand lived 
on School Street, between King’s Chapel and Master 
Lovell’s house, and the coast was down the hill along 
Beacon and School streets past the school-house.” 

‘Well, they were Latin School boys,” said Jeff. 

“They were boys from your first class who went 
and complained.” 

‘I’m glad something happened as I heard it. 
Seems to me all the stories have to be told over 
again before they are told straight. And did Gen- 
eral Haldimand really make his little speech about 
Boston boys ?”’ 

“Let us believe that!” said grandfather, laugh- 


ing. 


CHAPTER XI. 
A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 


JEFF’s birthday and his grandfather’s chanced to 
be the same day, the twenty-fourth of December, and 
as it was the first day of vacation, grandfather pro- 
posed to give himself a holiday too. 

“Come, boys,” said he; “ you’ve been pretty pa- 
tient listeners to all my long stories about old Bos- 
ton. Let us finish before Christmas. I’Il tell you 
what we will do. We will take one final walk this 
morning. There are three places I want to show 
you, — Griffin’s Wharf, the Old South Meeting- 
House, and Christ Church. Then if you want to 
ask your friend Jack Ehot to tea, we ’ll have a little 
tea-party, and I will wind up my stories this evening, 
and you won't have to listen longer to your old 
grandfather.” 

“Oh, but we only listen when we want to,” said 
Benjy candidly. ‘I went to sleep the other even- 
ing.” 

“Did you, you young rascal! Then keep awake 
to-night, or I’1l make you listen another year. Get 
your hats and coats, and be quick about it.” 


204 BOSTON TOWN. 


The walk which the three took that morning was 
not a very long one, and it took them over ground 
which they had traveled before, but grandtfather’s 
plan had been to show them Boston in the order of 
time, and he had come down in his stories to the Revy- 
olutionary period. To-day he led the boys to the old 
State House, which had been the central point of so 
many stories of Boston. He had a friend whose office 
was in the second story, looking down State Street, 
and he took the boys there first. 

“See!” he said, pointing with his stick, “you are 
looking down King Street from the old Town House. 
We will pretend we are in the council chamber. The 
street only ran about as far as Merchant’s Row down 
there, and beyond stretched Long Wharf, as far, I 
think, as you now see. Warehouses stretched on 
both sides for some distance, and then on the north 
side only, while a battery was planted at the end. 
It was the great approach to the town by water, and 
when British soldiers landed at Long Wharf they 
would look up the long narrow road before them, 
and see the Town House at the end. But our errand 
is to Griffin’s Wharf, at the end of Pearl Street. It 
has been Liverpool Wharf as long as I can remember, 
but it was Griffin’s Wharf in 1774.” 

“ Oh, | know what Griffin’s Wharf is famous for,” 
interrupted Jeff. ‘“ That is where the tea was tipped 
over in Boston harbor; but, grandfather, I really wish 
you would tell us why the tea was spilled. I wish 


































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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VIEW AT THE HEAD OF STATE STREET. 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 207 


you would tell us before we go down to the wharf. 
I never could quite understand why the Boston peo- 
ple objected to buying tea when it was sent over 
here.”’ 

‘‘ Because it was taxed,” said Benjy promptly. 

‘ But why should n't we have paid the tax?” in- 
sisted Jeff. “We have to pay a tax on tea now — 
don’t we ?”’ 

“ Yes. Every pound of tea that comes into Boston 
harbor is taxed by our government, and the merchant 
who has imported it, when he sells it to the grocer, 
adds to the price the amount of the tax which he has 
been obliged to pay the government.”’ 

“Then the grocer pays the tax and not the mer- 
chant,” said Jeff. 

“No, for he charges his customer a little more 
than the merchant has charged him, in order to make 
a little profit.” 

“Then the customer pays the tax.” 

“Yes, the last buyer pays what the tea cost the 
merchant to import, and a little more for the mer- 
chant’s profit, and the tax which the government has 
laid, and the profit which the grocer makes ; but the 
customer has got something. He has the tea, and 
the money which he has paid for his pound of tea 
has paid for the labor which the Chinaman expended 
in raising it, and the captain in bringing it across 
the water, and the merchant who owned the ship, 
and the grocer who brought it to his door, and the 


208 BOSTON TOWN. 


government which made it possible for him to earn 
enough money every day to enable him to sit down 
at his tea-table with his family and take his cup of 
tea.” 

“Then he ought not to grumble if he is taxed for 
his tea,” said Jeff. 

“No, he has nothing to grumble about. He may 
complain that government is foolish and extravagant, 
and spends a great deal of money unnecessarily, and 
so makes him pay a little more tax on his tea, but 
some tax he expects to pay.” 

‘Then why did people make such a fuss in 1775? ” 

“It was because the people in Boston said they 
were as much Englishmen as if they lived in Eng- 
land, and that it was unjust to lay a tax upon what 
they might choose to buy in London and order sent 
to them in Boston; that when England made them 
pay a tax upon what she sold to them, she was treat- 
ing them as if they were foreigners. England said 
to the colonies,—You shall not buy of any countries 
except England; and then she stationed men in the 
ports to collect taxes of the merchants upon all the 
gvoods which she sent over. The colonies denounced 
these taxes, and said they would do without the goods 
rather than pay them. In that way they gradually 
compelled England to withdraw the taxes, until at 
length there were few left. One of the most im- 
portant was that on tea, and the friends of America 
in England tried hard to get this tax repealed. The 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. _ 209 


colonies, to show their firmness, discontinued buying 
the tea, and as they had been great purchasers, there 
was soon a vast stock in England lying idle in the 
warehouses, for the tea kept coming from India and 
China. Now the English government was very anx- 
ious to have this tea sold, for it had a great deal to 
do with the East India Company, which imported the 
tea; it had lent the company a large sum of money, 
and wanted to get it back again. It could remove 
the tax, and all the people in America would eagerly 
buy the tea, but this it did not choose to do. Eng- 
land said, or rather Lord North, the prime minister, 
who was trying hard to please his royal master, said, 
— The tax is not much, but we won’t admit that we 
have no right to lay it; we have taken it off from 
almost everything else, but we will keep it on the 
tea. Bostonians and other Americans said, — The tax 
is not much, but we won't admit, by paying it, that 
England has any right to tax us. Now Lord North 
imagined that if he could make the tea a great deal 
cheaper he could break down the opposition in Amer- 
ica to the tax. The company that sold the tea was 
obliged to pay a tax of sixpence a pound before 
any was sent out of Kngland, and then threepence 
a pound was collected besides in America. Accord- 
ingly Lord North removed the export tax of sixpence 
on all the tea they might send to America, which 
would of course make it much cheaper, but he kept 


on the threepence tax. 
14 


210 BOSTON TOWN. 


*¢ As soon as this was known the people in America 
were angrier than ever. It was as much as telling 
them that they wanted tea more than they wanted 
their principles ; that they had made all this fuss be- 
cause the taxes had made their tea cost too much, 
and now they were more determined than ever that 
the tea should not be landed. Great meetings were 
held all over the country, and the people bound 
themselves by stronger promises not to take any tea 
at all as long as the hated tax was laid. By this time 
there had been established all over the country what 
were known as Committees of Correspondence ; in 
every town there were leading men who took counsel 
together, and kept the men in other towns acquainted 
with what was going on. There were no daily news- 
papers telling everybody all the news at once, and 
there was no general congress to which the different 
colonies sent delegates to act for them; but these 
committees took the place of newspapers and con- 
gress as well as they could, and when any news from 
England affecting the colonies was heard in Boston, 
Sam Adams or Warren or Cooper, or some other mem- 
ber of the committee, would write at once to New 
York, or Hartford, or Philadelphia, and tell the com- 
mittees there. In this way people were kept active 
all the time, and could advise each other, and they 
could all act in concert. So when the news came of 
the arrangement which Lord North had made with 
the East India Company, and that the ships had al- 


A-SMALL TEA-PARTY. ZEL 


ready started, letters flew back and forth, and in 
every great sea-port the leading men went to the 
governor and insisted that the ships should be sent 
‘back to England without being unloaded. In Boston 
Governor Hutchinson refused, and the people took 
the affair into their own hands. Meetings were held 
in Faneuil Hall and the Old South ; not only Boston 
men, but men from all | 
the towns about, flocked 
in to discuss the matter. 
The committee, with 
Sam Adams at their 22 
head, had repeated in- - — 
terviews with the mer- 
chants to whom the tea 
had been sent, and let- 
ters passed back and 
forth, the merchants jy -— 
trying to gain time, and ; 
the citizens determined | 
to press the matter toa | 
conclusion. They had _ 
posted a guard over the | 
tea-ships to make sure = Le} ——— 
that not one ounce of The O!d South before the Fire. 

tea was landed. This went on for nearly three weeks. 
Finally on Thursday, December 16, 1773, the last 
meeting was held when the final decision was to be 
reached. At ten o’clock in the morning people began 
















ZY BOSTON TOWN. 


to flock into the Old South to hear what Mr. Rotch, 
the owner of the Dartmouth, the chief tea-ship, would 
say. He came and said that the collector of the port 
had absolutely refused to give him papers by which 
the Dartmouth might be cleared and sent back to 
England. Everybody knew that two English ships 
of war were in the harbor commanding the channel, 
and that no ship could sail out without their consent. 
Mr. Rotch was bidden go to the governor, who was 
the collector’s superior officer, and demand his pa- 
pers. The governor meanwhile had taken pains to 
be out of the way, and had gone to his country resi- 
dence in Milton. So the people sent Mr. Rotch to 
find him, and adjourned till three o’clock in the af- 
ternoon, when he was to come back and report. 
“When three o’clock came the church was 
crammed with people. It was believed that seven 
thousand people were inside and out. There they 
waited for Rotch, and while they waited they listened 
to speeches from patriots. Sunset came and Mr. 
Rotch had not returned. It was dark and cold, and I 
think the people must have thought it very solemn 
as they waited and waited. At length the chairman 
put the question whether the tea should be allowed 
to be landed, and a tremendous No! came from the 
immense crowd. Six o'clock, and Rotch had not 
come. At a quarter past six Rotch came and felt his 
way to the stand. It was still and dark as he spoke. 
He had seen the governor, who refused to allow the 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 213 


ships to leave. As soon as he ceased, Sam Adams 
stood up and said, ‘ This meeting can do nothing more 
to save the country!’ and instantly there was a tre- 
mendous shout and war-whoop outside the building. 
The people poured out of the doors, and in the dim 
light saw forty or fifty Indians apparently hurry- 
ing down Milk Street. They quickly guessed where 
they were going, and great crowds rushed to Griffin’s 
Whart. Come, Jeff! Come, Benjy! let’s go down 
there now,” and the old gentleman, who had become 
stirred by his own story, clapped on his hat and led 
the way into the street. It was a bright morning 
and the streets were full of people —a very different 
Boston from that dark December twilight so long ago. 
They made their way down to Liverpool Wharf. 

‘“ It is changed a good deal, I suppose,” said grand- 
father, “ but I wanted you to stand near the place. 
My father brought me here once. He was a Latin 
School boy at the time of the tea-party, and was one 
of the crowd who followed the pretended Indians. 
All he could remember was seeing a great hubbub; 
he could not get near enough to see the men at work, 
but he could hear the shouts and laughs as the boxes 
were ripped open and the tea tossed into the water.” 

“It must have been all planned beforehand,” said 
Jeff. 

“To be sure it was. There had been more than 
three weeks of discussion, and it was pretty plain 
how it would all end, but I don’t believe there were 


214 _ BOSTON TOWN. 


many in the secret, and those who were disguised 
kept their own counsel very well. In those days 
there was a great deal of secret correspondence and 
counseling going on, for men knew that they could 
not tell what was to be done without it’s getting to 
the ears of the governor and his friends.” 

‘Was not any of the tea saved?” asked Benjy, as 
they walked up toward Washington Street, presently. 

“Yes, one of the men came home with some tea in 
his shoes, and his wife wrote on a piece of parchment 
what the tea was, and put it with the tea into a bot- 
tle to keep. She knew pretty well that this even- 
ing’s work would be remembered.” 

‘‘ Has the bottle been kept?” 

“Yes, a Boston gentleman has it. There was one 
man too in the crowd who thought it would be a fine 
thing to carry off some of the tea, so he went on board 
with the rest, and slyly stuffed all he could into his 
coat pockets, and inside the linmg. He was a Cap- 
tain O’Connor, of Charlestown. One of the men who 
was at work destroying the tea saw him do this, and 
as the captain was leaving the ship, he sprang for- 
ward and caught him. O’Connor made a jump and 
left his coat tails behind him; Mr. Hewes cried out 
and let the people know what he had done, and as the 
captain tried to get away from the wharf, everybody 
in his neighborhood helped him on with a kick, and 
the next day Captain O’Connor’s coat tails were nailed 
to the whipping-post in Charlestown.” 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. yA ES 


“And what did the English do when they heard of 
it?” asked Jeff. 

“They shut up the harbor of Boston, Jeff. The 
Parliament enacted what is known as the Boston 
. Port Bill, providing that after the 18th of June no 
person should load or unload any ship in the harbor. 
In this way they meant to punish the town, and no 
more effective punishment could have been chosen, 
for by this act Boston, which was the leading sea- 
port in the country, lost all its trade at once. Eng- 
land treated the town as if it had been a foolish, 
naughty child, and said, — Pay for the tea which you 
have destroyed, and we will repeal the Port Bill. 
But Boston was made of different stuff. English men 
of war blockaded her harbor, and an English garri- 
son came over with the new governor, Governor 
Gage ; but although thousands of people were thrown 
out of employment, nobody was found who was ready 
to take back what had been done, and all the towns 
about, and all the other colonies, agreed that they 
would stand by Boston.” 

By this time they had reached the Old South, and 
went in. The boys had often been there before to 
see the curiosities, but all the talk about the great 
public meetings held in it made them wish to see the 
building once more. They wandered about among 
_the curiosities, and looked at the portraits, and wished 
in vain that the old pulpit was back, beneath the 
sounding-board. 


216 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘It would be easier then to imagine Warren mak- 
ing his famous oration here,” said grandfather. 

‘“¢ Was he one of the speakers at the tea-meeting ?” 
asked Jeff. 

“Most likely he was, but I was remembering the 
oration which he made a few weeks before the Battle 
of Lexington, at the anniversary of the Boston Mas- 
sacre. You know I told you that for several years 
the people met on the 5th of March, to hear an ora- 
tion and keep alive their indignation against the 
British. This year, 1775, the 5th of March came on 
Sunday, and they meant to have their celebration on 
Monday. The town was full now of British soldiers, 
and more were expected the next month. Fortifica- 
tions had been thrown up in different directions, and 
the Boston people saw with bitterness that they were 
treated as a conquered town. All the while, how- 
ever, the leaders of the people were growing more 
active and more secret in their preparations for re- 
sistance. Letters were flyimg back and forth, and 
frequent meetings were held. The governor had done 
and was doimg all he could to keep down the peo- 
ple. An act had been passed prohibiting the calling 
of town-meetings, but the Boston people had adroitly 
evaded the act by adjourning their meetings from 
time to time, so that they called no new meeting, but 
kept the old one alive, much to the perplexity of the 
governor, who did not dare go a step farther and 
break up an existing meeting. When the time drew 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. QT 


near for the celebration of the 5th of March, it was 
given out that any man making an oration at that 
time, and especially any one making any reflection 
upon the royal family, was liable to arrest and capi- 
tal punishment. _I think that Governor Gage, who 
was a weak man, really tried to frighten the leaders 
into silence. Of course his threat had just the oppo- 
site effect ; it only made the leaders more resolute, 
and led to the selection of one of their most promi- 
nent and bravest men, Dr. Joseph Warren. 

“When Monday morning came, the people met in 
Faneuil Hall, but soon for want of room had to ad- 
journ to this building, where they had voted to have 
the oration. ‘They sent a committee to wait on Dr. 
Warren, who lived in Hanover Street, where the 
American House now is, and asked him to give the 
oration at half after eleven o'clock that morning. 
The pulpit here was draped in black, and the leaders 
of the people were assembled behind it, while a great 
crowd filled the house, and some forty British sol- 
diers in uniform were directly in front and occupying 
even the pulpit stairs. They had threatened to break 
up the meeting, and Adams had politely given them 
the most conspicuous seats in the house. We can 
imagine how angry the people were. Before them 
was the hated red coat which had occasioned the very 
bloodshed five years before, now to be commemo- 
rated, and the presence of a great body of troops in 
town was a reminder of the loss of their liberties. 


218 BOSTON TOWN. 


It would not take much to cause a riot in the meet- 
ing-house, for people when they are angry do not 


ange — —_—_—— 








Joseph Warren. 


usually stop to count the cost. The soldiers on theix 
side were angry also, for they had been provoked 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 219 


and insulted by the people, and some of the hot- 
headed ones were quite ready to break out. The 
church was packed with people waiting for the ora- 
tor. At last he came, driving in a chaise to the 
door, and went into an apothecary shop on the op- 
posite side of the street. There he put on the gown 
which orators wore and came out. But it was im- 
possible to squeeze through the crowd, and besides it 
was not well to create any disturbance by trying to 
get in, so some of his friends got a ladder and placed 
it against the side of the building, just under a win- 
dow which was back of the pulpit. The window was 
open, Warren climbed the ladder, gathered his robe 
about him, and stepped into the pulpit, where he 
stood before the people. He made his speech, which 
was spirited and courageous. He denied that Bos- 
ton people were rebellious; they demanded only 
their rights as British freemen. The soldiers below 
coughed and hemmed and tried to interrupt him by 
all sorts of noises, but he kept on. While he was 
speaking and exhorting the people to stand fast by 
their colors, a young officer who was upon the pul- 
pit stairs took a handful of bullets out of his pocket, 
and held them up for the orator and anybody else to 
see. it was as much as to say,— Talk as much as 
you please; we have these, and they will say the 
last word. Warren saw him; he merely dropped his 
handkerchief upon the bullets and covered them with 
it, and went on with his oration. It was as much as 


220 BOSTON TOWN. 


to say, — Put your bullets out of sight, my fine fel- 
low; they don’t frighten me. Ah! it was not many 
weeks after that when Warren fell at Bunker Hill.” 

‘“‘ Perhaps one of those very bullets struck him,” 
said Benjy. 

“Perhaps so. But come, we have one other place 
to see. We’ll 
go to Christ 
Church. Itisa 
bright morning, 
and not very 
cold. Well see 
what we can see 
there.” 

a Although the 
Hy, boys had been 
A: born in Boston, 
and always 
i lived there, 
they had never 
yet been in- 
side of Christ 
Church. They 

Christ Church. had passed _ it, 
indeed, when they went with their grandfather to 
hunt for what they still called the Smugglers’ Cave, 
and they had read the inscription on the tablet in 
the tower. To-day there were people busy dress- 
ing the church for Christmas, so they found entrance 

















A SMALL TEA-PARTY. rh | 


easy. The church has not a large congregation ; 
many of its members have died or moved away, but 
every Sunday a good many visitors go there because 
of the fame of the building. They are shown the 
curlosities, — the old Prayer Book and Bible given 
by King George the Second; the old organ, and the 
four wooden figures upon the railing in front of the 
choir seats. 

‘‘Those were for holding candles,” said grand- 
father, ‘‘and are said to have been taken from a 
French ship by one of Captain Gruchy’s privateers. 
They were intended for a cathedral in Montreal, I 
believe, but found their way to this church instead.” 

They saw the bust of Washington against the wall, 
the earliest monument to him, it is said, which was 
raised in the country. But after all, the chief inter- 
est to the boys’ minds was in the connection of Paul 
Revere with the church. They knew the famous 
story of Paul Revere’s ride, and were eager to climb 
the steps of the tower to see for themselves the place 
where the lanterns were hung, so grandfather found 
the sexton, and asked him to lead them up. 

“Tt is pretty cold up there,” said the sexton, “ for 
it’s all open you know, but if you want to try it Ill 
take you. Many a time on a hot summer day, when 
it was so stifling below I could hardly breathe, I’ve 
climbed up into the belfry and found it as cool as on 
top of a mountain. But come along,” and he led the 
way. 


Boe BOSTON TOWN. 


“Now we’re going up the very staircase,” said 
Benjy, as they tramped along. 

‘Perhaps you are,’ said the sexton, ‘“ but the 
steeple isn’t the same. It was blown down in a great 
gale in 1804, and they put up this one, which is six- 
teen feet shorter, but I believe it looks like the old 
one.” 

“Oh, dear!” said Jeff; “seems to me nothing is 
the same. Faneuil Hall and the Old South and the 
Old State House are all different. I wish there were 
something that looked just as it did two hundred 
years ago.” 

‘* Why, look here,” said the sexton, who was quite. 
philosophical. ‘“’Tisn’t in reason to complain. 
Houses change and cities change, just as people do. 
You can’t wear this jacket you’ve got on twenty 
years from now, but you'll be the same person.” 

“Well said,” said grandfather ; ‘‘ but I know how 
the boy teels. I like old Boston, but, after all, we 
don’t want it to be a great museum. LEven this 
church I’d rather keep for the sake of the people 
who can worship in it on Sunday, and learn to love 
God and honor their country. Then if a chance ever 
came again, they ’d be ready to hang lanterns out, or 
show an electric light, if that was any better.” 

They found it pretty breezy and cool in the open 
tower, and buttoned their coats tightly about them, 
and pulled their hats down. They looked off across 
the water to Charlestown. How narrow the river 
looked; how near the other side! 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 993 


“‘T’m sure any one over there could see the lan- 
terns,” said Benjy. 

“ But who do you think hung the lanterns?” asked 
grandfather of the sexton ; “ Robert Newman or Cap- 
‘tain Pulling?” 

“Well, now, I tell you what I think. You see 
Newman was a young man, a young Englishman, and 
Captain Pulling was an old man. He was a patriot 
and a friend of Paul Revere’s, and a vestryman. It 
would have been a pretty difficult thing for him to 
have climbed up here in the night-time, and hung 
those lanterns. Well, supposing he sent Newman 
up with them, and told him what to do? Don’t you 
see then any one could say that either of them hung 
the lanterns out? It’s like this. You build a house ; 
but say I’m a carpenter, and I do the building. You 
can tell people you built the house, and I can say I 
built it, and we’d both be true.”’ 

Grandfather shook his head. 

“That does n’t quite convince me,” said he. “ Puil- 
ing was not so very old. He was less than forty 
years of age. He was a patriot, too, for he was one 
of those who helped make Boston harbor into a tea- 
pot, and I don’t believe he would have given over 
such a dangerous thing as hanging out the signals 
to a young fellow who might not have been in the 
secret. He wouldn’t have saved his own head, and 
he might have endangered Newman’s. No, no, de- 
pend upon it, Pulling, who had to hide and get out 


AC. Se BOSTON TOWN. 


of the town, was the man who did it, and Newman, 
who stayed here and was let alone, had nothing to 
do with it, except to give up the key to Pulling.” 


CA 
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Wis) 
ial 
" 


. 


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Hanging the Lanterns. 


“It isn’t so easy to get rid of an old story,” said 
the sexton. ‘“ There are hundreds of people who 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 925 


have heard that Newman was the man to one who 
knows the name of Pulling.” 

“ That is true,” said grandfather, “ and we must n’t 
do any injustice to the sexton. Many an obscure man 
has done an heroic deed and somebody else has had 
the credit of it. So here’s to the health of Pulling 
and Newman !” 

They stopped to look at the bells which hung in 
the tower, eight of them, all cast by Abel Rudhall, 
of Gloucester, England, in 1744. Separately they 
told the story that they were the first chimes cast for 
the British empire in North America ; that Governor 
Shirley was governor then, and that the church was 
twenty-one years old when the bells were hung. 

“That was the height of British power in New 
England,” said grandfather. ‘‘ When the bells first 
rang, Sam Adams was just out of college, and Boston 
was still a loyal British town, and the colony had a 
governor who was ambitious to show that New Eng- 
land could make war and have riches and a prosper- 
ous trade as well as the old country. But there was 
-something better for New England and Boston than 
to be just an echo of Great Britain.” 

“What a fine place this must have been from 
which to see the battle of Bunker Hill,” said Benjy. 

“So General Gage thought, Benjy, if tradition is 
true, for the story goes that he climbed these stairs 
and watched the progress of the battle here.” 

“Isn't this the steeple that Dr. Holmes means in 
his story, — you know, the poem that I’ve read.” 


226 BOSTON TOWN. 


‘ You mean his ‘ Grandmother’s Story,’ Jeff. No, 
it was hardly this steeple, if General Gage was here. 
It may have been the steeple of what was called the 
New Brick, which was built in Hanover Street a year 
or two earlier than Christ Church. I fancy all the 
steeples and high places, especially at this end of the 
town, were occupied by people at that time watch- 
ing the battle. And when the people were shut up in 
town during the siege of Boston, some of the bolder 
used the spires as high points from which to make 
signals to their friends in camp.” 

““T don’t see,” said Jeff, as they walked home, 
‘how there could have been a siege of Boston. Why, 
if Washington and his army had fired they might 
have hit some of their friends here, and have hurt 
the houses too, and if General Howe had wanted to 
march out of town, couldn't he have gone? He 
could take his ships and sail away at any rate.” 

“ Yes, that is just what he did. Washington could 
not have shut up the British in Boston so that they 
could not possibly get away, for he had no fleet, but 
he could get near enough to the town to fire shot and 
shell in and do a great deal of damage, and that is 
what he was ready to do when he built the earth 
works on Dorchester Heights. Some day you must 
go there and see how the place commands the town. 
You can’t have war without doing damage and bring- 
ing a great deal of misery. If Washington had pep- 
pered Boston in order to drive the British out, or 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. PAP AT 


make them surrender, some of the men who fired the 
guns would have been pretty sure that they were in- 
juring their own property. When the patriots went 
from Boston and gathered in the camps outside, they 
were willing to show General Howe that they did 
not care for Boston unless they could live there as 
free men.” ~ 

“ Did they all leave the town?” 

‘‘ No, most of the leaders left, but there were some 
merchants who stayed to keep guard over their prop- 
erty, and there were a good many poor people who 
could not get away.” 

“ But why did n’t General Howe march out, grand- 
father, before General Washington got his powder ? 
He had a good army, and he might have beaten the 
Americans.” 

“What good would it have done him to march 
out? he would only have had to march back again. 
He would have been in the country amongst ene- 
mies, and if the American army had broken up and 
scattered, it could have come together again. Be- 
sides, Jeff, you must remember that it had not yet 
been decided that there really was war. To the 
British soldier there was a company of rebels who 
had fired on his majesty’s troops; there was no gov- 
ernment sending out an army to meet the British 
army; and General Howe was not sure but it would 
all blow over and the Americans lay down their arms. 
He thought it was a quarrel about taxes, and that 


228 BOSTON TOWN. 


Parliament might possibly settle it without a fight. 
His business was to hold Boston and blockade its 
harbor. I think he must have been very much an- 
noyed at finding himself shut up in Boston.” 

‘They could n’t go into the country,” said Benjy. 

“They did not want to go. The soldiers were in 
garrison, and it was of very little consequence to 
most of them where they were. The officers found 
the Tory families very polite to them, and they tried 
to enjoy themselves here, but it was somewhat dull, 
and then nothing came into town except by water, 
and they found themselves, and the people, too, 
forced to live sometimes on rather poor provisions. 
I think the state dinners given at the Province House 
must have been rather dismal affairs. When I was 
a young man I went once to see a couple of old la- 
dies who were daughters of a famous Boston minis- 
ter. Their father was a Tory, and they were Tories 
too. They had been young girls during the Revo- 
lution, and they had lived through a second war with 
Great Britain, but they were very proud of calling 
themselves English still. They asked me politely to 
sit down in a particular chair, and then told me tri 
umphantly that I was under the English crown, for 
a picture of the man they called their sovereign hung 
just above it. They talked of how they used to walk 
in the Common leaning on Lord Percy’s arm, and 
how he had his band serenade them. It was very 
amusing to the people about them; there they lived 


A SMALL TEA-PARTY. 229 


with all their old things, and made believe as hard 
as they could that there had been no Revolution, 
and that Boston was still an English town. One of 
them wrote to King William when he came to the 
throne, for they had met him when he was a young 
man, and she wished to assure him that they were 
still faithful and loyal British subjects.” 

The walk had brought them home again, and it 
was nearly dinner time. After dinner Jeff and Benjy 
went off to find their friend Jack Eliot and invite 
him to tea. Jack lived in Roxbury, but was staying 
for a few days at his uncle’s in Boston, and always 
found it easy to take tea at Mr. Callender’s. His 
uncle lived at the South End, and he was very proud 
of the fact that where the house stood had once been 
water. ‘ Anybody,” he said, “ could build a city on 
dry land, but it takes a good deal to fill up a bay 
and build on that.” 


CHAPTER XII. 
BOSTON CITY. 


THE hoys were used to what they called Jack 
Eliot’s brag, and they were so constantly reminded 
by their grandfather of old Boston that they felt 
themselves called upon to take up the cudgels for 
their ancestors, and to maintain that the Boston of 
to-day was a very tame and uninteresting city com- 
pared with the town of Sam Adams and Benjamin 
Franklin. 

‘“‘ Grandfather,” Jeff said after tea, “I don’t think 
Jack cares much for old Boston. He is always talk- 
ing of what Boston is going to do or to be.” 

“Well,” said Jack, “ I believe that if Winthrop or. 
Sam Adams or Franklin could see our Boston now 
they would think a good deal more of it than of the 
dingy little town they knew.” 

‘“ Dingy little town!” exclaimed Benjy. “ Why 
it must have been a great deal sunnier and cleaner 
than it is now. You could go right down a lane to 
the water. It must have been something like what 
Hull is now, or Hingham.” 

“ Jack,” said grandfather, ‘“ what do you think is 
the most famous thing in Boston to-day, or what 


BOSTON CITY. Zod 


would you take a friend to see first? Stop, you may 
each write on a slip of paper, and, Sarah, do you do 
the same, and we ’ll see what comes out.” 

“ Well, grandfather, you must, too,” said Benjy. 

“So I will. Now, think well.” There was con- 
siderable silence in the room, after the paper and 
pencils had been brought out, and the boys looked at 
each other and at the ceiling. At length Jack said 
he was ready, and presently the others, looking a 
little doubtful, laid aside their pencils. 

“¢ Come, Jack,” said grandfather, “let us hear what 
yours is.” 

“ Commonwealth Avenue,’ said Jack, promptly. 









































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Commonwealth Avenue 


“Jd start from the Public Garden and walk down 
the whole length, and then show them how much 
farther it was going, and what splendid buildings it 
was going to have on it.” 


2B2 BOSTON TOWN. 


“Well, that would be a fine thing to show.” | 

“And I’d tell them,” went on Jack, “that the 
land was all made land, every bit of it, and that when 
it was finished it would be the broadest and finest 
avenue in America.”’ 

“There’s a little bit of brag in that last, Jack ; 
but if you were to say the Back Bay generally, I 
think you would name the finest show that Boston 
city has to offer.” 

‘““T wrote Back Bay,” said the boys’ mother. 

“ But I thought it wouldn’t count to take such a 
big thing,” said Jack. “It’s like sweeping your 
hand round half a circle, and saying, ‘So much of 
Boston.’ ” 

“It was rather general,” she laughed; ‘“ but I was 
thinking of that great group of buildings, finished 
and unfinished, which is to make a few acres of land 
there renowned. One of these days a person stand- 
ing in Trinity Square will be able to see Trinity 
Church, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of 
Natural History, the Institute of Technology, the 
Public Library, the Art Club, the Normal Art School, 
and the Medical College.” 

“He can’t see the Public Library from there,” 
objected Benjy. 

‘* Not now, but he will when the new one is built.” 

“It’s a fine thing,” said grandfather, “a very fine 
thing, and when Boston has all those great shows, 
and thousands of men and women and young men 


‘SLYV SANIS 40 WNSSNW SHL 
















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































BOSTON CITY. 235 


and young women are studying art and literature and 
science and medicine, I hope they ’ll not forget the 
small beginnings of the town. But come, Benjy, 
what did you set down ?”’ 

“7 put down Bunker Hill Monument.” 

““To be sure, to be sure,” said grandfather; “I 
had quite forgotten that Bunker Hill was in Boston 
now. It’s a good thing to show, Benjy; it’s a gran- 
ite spike driven into the ground to show where Bos- 
ton men went out to meet the enemy, and did not 
wait for the enemy to come to them. It’s a granite 
forefinger pointing up to the sky to remind us that 
the men who fought there prayed to God first, be- 
cause they wanted to be on His side. Now, Jeff, 
what ’s your word ?”’ 

“JT put down two,” said Jeff; “‘ Faneuil Hall and 
the State House.” 

“That wasn’t fair,” said Jack. 

‘ Well, I could n’t tell which.” 

“I don’t wonder, Jeff,” said grandfather ; “for the 
Cradle of Liberty was on the place where the towns- 
people met. and made the laws which governed the 
town, and there they met when they looked each 
other in the face and said they would not give up 
their liberty. The State House is a larger Faneuil 
Hall, and it holds the public lite of the people. Bos- 
ton town has always been the capital of the colony, 
or the province, or the commonwealth, and it would 
be a small life only that the town led if it forgot 


236 BOSTON TOWN. 


that here the State had its head and did its thinking; 
that under the great gilt dome the governor id 
senate and representatives of all the towns met and 
counseled for the good of the whole State. It would 
be a selfish city that forgot how the railway trains 
were rushing in all day long from the country bring- 
ing people and goods ; how the country was feeding 
the city, and giving its best blood all the while to- 
ward making it greater and richer and stronger. I 
was pretty near you in my choice myself, Jeff.” 

“Were you, grandfather? What did you put 
down? Was it where the Hancock House stood ? 
Was it the Common ?”’ 

‘No, I’ll tell you what it was. If I had a young 
fellow come to see me, who wanted to see the finest 
thing in Boston, I think I’d just take him up to the 
cupola of the State House, and show him Boston it- 
self.”’ 

“Well, to be sure.” 

“ Yes,” said grandfather, who had got up from his 
chair, and was pacing back and forth in his excite- 
ment, “I’d point him to the reservoir below, and 
show him that there, close at hand, stood the great 
Beacon, with its tar-barrel hung at the top to give 
warning to the people in the country if there was 
danger in Boston; Id tell him that the tar barrels 
burned fiercely on the 18th of April, 1689, when it 
was known that the Prince of Orange had landed in 
England, and all the people flocked to Boston to 


BOSTON CITY. 237 


drive the hated Andros out; and that again a fresh 
tar-barrel was hung up there when news came, in 
1768, of a British 
army sent to Bos- 
ton. I’d show him 
the roof of Faneuil 
Hall and the spire 
of the Old South 
and Christ Church 
steeple and Bunker 
Hill Monument. 
He should look out 
to sea and see the 
steamers coming 
and going; and 
inland, and watch 
the railway trains; 
and down on the 
wharves, and up at 
the grain elevators. 
He should think 
how Boston was Weds 

stretching her iron arms across the great West and 
to Mexico, and sending her ships around the world. 
Then I’d have him look down on the green Common, 
and see the boys and girls playing; and I’d try to 
show him the -house where blind Prescott wrote his 
histories, and the places where Webster lived, and 
Everett, and Sumner. He should see the Blind Asy- 
















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































238 BOSTON TOWN. 


lum over in South Boston, and the hospitals, the 
school buildings, and the library and the churches, 
and I’d tell him, I’d tell him’’ — 

‘What would you tell him, grandfather?” Grand- 
father did not speak for a moment; then he went 
on, — 

“Td tell him that all these things were done by 
men and women; that a great and noble city could 
only be where there were great and noble men and 
women, who feared God and loved men, and that 
when there were such men and women the city 
would live and grow and be a blessing. Jeff,” he 
asked suddenly, “‘ what is the motto of the city?” 

“T don’t know.” 

“JT do,” said Jack promptly ; “it’s on one of the 
gates to the Common, Sicut patribus sit deus nobis.” 

“And what does it mean, Jack ?”’ 

“May God be with us as he was with our fa- 
thers.” 

“That ’s it, my lad. And who were our fathers, 
Jeff?” 

‘«* Pater, avus, proavus, abavus, atavus, tritavus,’ ”’ 
said Jeff with great promptness. 

“You've learned your lesson well, Jeff. Aye, God 
was with them all. That was what made Boston town. 
Now you may have your games, but not till I’ve read 
you a grand poem on our dear Boston by the poet 
Emerson, who once lived here and always loved the 
town.” Grandfather took down a book from the 


BOSTON CITY. 939 


shelf, adjusted his great magnifying glass, which he 
used when he read, and so half read, half chanted the 














































































































































































































Trinity Church, 


poem, while the boys and their mother and Jack Eliot 
listened. Long may they remember — 


240 BOSTON TOWN. 


BOSTON. 
Sicut patribus sit deus nobis. 


The rocky nook with hill-tops three 
Looked eastward from the farms, 
And twice each day the flowing sea 
Took Boston in its arms ; 
The men of yore were stout and poor, 
And sailed for bread to every shore. 


And where they went on trade intent 
They did what freemen can, 
Their dauntless ways did all men praise, 
The merchant was a man. 
The world was made for honest trade, — 
To plant and eat be none afraid. 


The waves that rocked them on the deep 
To them their secret told, 
Said the winds that sung the lads to sleep, 
“ Like us be free and bold!” 
The honest waves refuse to slaves 
The empire of the ocean caves. 


Old Europe groans with palaces, 
Has lords enough and more ; 
We plant and build by foaming seas 
A city of the poor ; 
For day by day could Boston Bay 
Their honest labor overpay. 


The noble craftsman we promote, 
Disown the knave and fool ; 


BOSTON CITY. 241 


Each honest man shall have his vote, 
Each child shall have his school. 
For what avail the plow or sail, 
Or land or life, if freedom fail ? 


We grant no dukedoms to the few, 
We hold like rights, and shall, — 
Equal on Sunday in the pew, 
On Monday in the mall. 


The wild rose and the barberry thorn 
Hung out their summer pride 

Where now on heated pavements worn 
The feet of millions stride. 


Fair rose the planted hills behind 
The good town on the bay ; 

And where the western hills declined 
The prairie stretched away. 


What rival towers majestic soar 
Along the stormy coast, — 

Penn’s town, New York, and Baltimore, 
If Boston knew the most! 


They laughed to know the world so wide ; 
The mountains said, ‘‘ Good day! 
We greet you well, you Saxon men, 
Up with your towns and stay !” 
The world was made for honest trade, — 
To plant and eat be none afraid. 


* For you,” they said, “no barriers be, 
For you no sluggard rest ; 

Each street leads downward to the sea, 
Or landward to the west.” 


242 


BOSTON TOWN. 


Oh, happy town beside the sea, : a 
Whose roads lead everywhere to all; - 

Than thine no deeper moat can be, 
No steeper fence, no better wall! , . 


Bad news from George on the English throne: 
“ You are thriving well,” said he ; 
“ Now by these presents be it known,. 
You shall pay us a tax on tea ; 
’Tis very small, — no load at all, — 
Honor enough that we send the call.” . 


“ Not so,” said Boston ; ‘“ good my lord, 
We pay your governors here 
Abundant for their bed and board, 
Six thousand pounds a year. 
(Your highness knows our homely word,) 
Millions for self government 
But for tribute never a cent.” 


The cargo came! and who could blame 
If Indians seized the tea, 
And, chest by chest, let down the same 
Into the laughing sea? 
For what avail the plow or sail, 
Or land or life, if freedom fail ? 


The townsmen braved the English king, 
Found friendship in the French, 

And Honor joined the patriot ring 
Low on their wooden bench. 


O bounteous seas that never fail ! 
O day remembered yet! 

O happy port that spied the sail 
Which wafted Lafayette ! 


BOSTON CITY. 243 


Pole-star of light in Europe’s night, 
That never faltered from the right. 


Kings shook with fear, old empires crave 
The secret force to find 

Which fired the little state to save 
The rights of all mankind. 


But right is might through all the world ; 
Province to province faithful clung, 
Through good and ill the war-bolt hurled, 
Till Freedom cheered and the joy-bells rung. 


The sea returning day by day 
Restores the world-wide mart ; 
So let each dweller on the Bay 
Fold Boston in his heart, 
Till these echoes be choked with snows, 
Or o’er the town blue ocean flows. 


Let the blood of her hundred thousands 
Throb in each manly vein ; 
And the art of all her wisest 
Make sunshine in her brain. 
Fer you can teach the lightning speech, 
And round the globe your voices reach. 


And each shall care for other, 
And each to each shall bend, 

To the poor a noble brother, 
To the good an equal friend. 


A blessing through the ages thus 
Shield all thy roofs and towers ! 

God with the fathers, so with us, 
Thou darling town of ours ! 





American Statesmen. 


A Series of Biographies of Men conspicuous in the Political 
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EDITED BY 


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